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Propaganda Analysis

VOLUME I OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE
INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS, INC.

October, 1 937 to October, 1 938

WITH NEW MATERIALS TO AID
STUDENT AND ADULT GROUPS IN THE ANALYSIS
OF TODAY’S PROPAGANDAS

tj . i

INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS, INC.

130 MORNINGSIDE DRIVE, NEW YORK, N.Y.

1938

q o Z 9 7

INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS, INC.

OFFICERS

President, E. C. LINDEMAN, New York School of Social Work

Vice President, KIRTLEY MATHER, Harvard University

Treasurer, NED H. DEARBORN, New York University

Executive Secretary, CLYDE R. MILLER, Teachers College,
Columbia University

ADVISORY BOARD

Frank E. Baker, Milwaukee State Teachers College
Charles A. Beard

Hadley Cantril, Princeton University
Edgar Dale, Ohio State University
Leonard Doob, Yale University
Paul Douglas, University of Chicago

Gladys Murphy Graham, University of California at Los Angeles

F. Ernest Johnson, Teachers College, Columbia University

Grayson N. Kefauver, Stanford University

William Heard Kilpatrick

Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University

Malcolm S. MacLean, University of Minnesota

Ernest O. Melby, Northwestern University

James E. Mendenhall, Lincoln School, New York City

Robert K. Speer, New York University

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Preface

T HIS volume is a guide to the understand-
ing of the many propagandas assailing
Americans today and certain to assail them, per-
haps with increasing force, in the immediate
future. It comprises studies published since Oc-
tober, 1937 by the newly organized Institute for
Propaganda Analysis. It contains hitherto un-
published analytical suggestions which should
be of particular and timely help to individuals,
to members of adult groups and of college and
high school classes who want to know how to
recognize propaganda and analyze it.

In the world today there is conflict between
two faiths: that of the democrat, who holds that
man is an end in himself, that everything worth-
while in life depends on respect for the indi-
vidual, on justice, and on friendly intercourse
among men of all kinds; and that of the new
dictators, glorying in power and war, hating and
despising the “humanitarian weakness” of de-
mocracy. The creed of the dictators is danger-
ously attractive to many; in it there is none of
the “drudgery of hard thinking” demanded by
democracy, but a simple faith, a career of ad-
venture, excitement, and self-sacrifice in some
“great and glorious cause.”

The first principle of action in a dictator-
ship is to weld a powerful propaganda machine
with which to bring all the people “into line,”
to transform them into selfless automatons ex-
isting only for the greater glory of the state.
The first principle of action in a democracy is
that all of its mature members understand the
decisions they make, and share in the making
of them. From this it follows that there must
be no barriers to the carrying on of govern-
ment by the consent of the governed. It is essen-
tial in a democratic society that young people
and adults learn how to think, learn how to
make up their minds. They must learn how to
think independently , and they must also learn
how to think together . They must come to con-
clusions, while at the same time recognizing
that other men, for whom they have affection
and respect, are coming to opposite conclusions.
So far as individuals are concerned, the art of
democracy is the art of thinking and discussing
independently together.

But there are factors in a democratic society

which sometimes militate against the best use
of discussion. Walter Lippmann indicated some
of these when he wrote, “The private citizen
today has come to feel rather like a deaf spec-
tator in the back row. . . . [Public affairs] are
managed, if they are managed at all, at dis-
tant centers, from behind scenes, by unnamed
powers.” What are these powers, and whose in-
visible hands pull the strings which make things
happen? And why do we “think” and act and
vote in prescribed ways when certain strings are
pulled?

This situation is a far cry from Aristotle’s
belief in the wisdom of collective humanity,
from Horace Mann’s faith in the “free play of
intelligence.”

The challenge to democracy which the world
offers today is for our American democracy to
keep on making its own decisions, to make ever-
wiser decisions concerning our problems, and
to keep on inviting free, even if dangerous,
choice. The fascination of democracy is that it
is so often at the crossroads, there are so many
propagandists pointing out the direction we
should take. The disappointment about dicta-
torships is that they seem to promise stability
and security, but so often end with decisions
which do not yield security — decisions which
crush the individuals concerned and drive on to
the annihilation in war of society itself.

The corrective which Americans increasingly
see that they must put to the weaknesses of their
democracy — to the temptation to take too
much of their thinking ready-made from others
— is education. In a non-democratic state the
lack of educational opportunity will cause
great loss in countless ways to individuals, and
ultimately to the state. But the stability of the
state will not be directly affected. To a demo-
cratic state, education is a vital necessity; for,
without it, it is as if a man who had no knowl-
edge of how to handle machinery and whose
mistakes would spell wide disaster were placed
in charge of a complicated and rather danger-
ous machine.

The world today is the victim of a system
of subtle and ceaseless propaganda — suppress-
ing, exaggerating, distorting. Backgrounds are
established against which identical facts ap-

111

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

pear so different as to be almost unrecognizable,
and the task of finding solutions for difficulties
is rendered infinitely more complex by the fact
that in the modern world we can know only a
few things from experience, we must depend
upon “authorities,” upon what we read and
hear for our knowledge. We must depend on
those who supply the news or other material
for judgment. The work of educators in a
democratic society must be continually to em-
phasize to the general body of citizens their
duty to search out for themselves the matters
on which it is the function of citizenship to
form opinions and record decisions.

Increasingly since the World War, and espe-
cially during the last decade, the citizenry of
this country has come to recognize the impor-
tance of recognizing propaganda and of under-
standing the role which it plays in their lives.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, organ-
ized in October 1937, was established as a non-
profit, educational institution to analyze the
propagandas of today and to formulate meth-
ods whereby American citizens can make their
own analyses of “attempts to persuade them to
do something that they might not do if they
were given all of the facts.”

In a democracy, freedom of speech necessarily
means freedom to propagandize; and this free-
dom implies the obligation resting upon citizens
to analyze propaganda affecting their interests,
and the interests of the community.

“There are three possible ways to deal with
propaganda,” it was pointed out in the Octo-
ber, 1937 letter of the Institute. “You can sup-
press it, meet it with counter-propaganda, or
analyze it and try to see how much truth there
is in it. We are going to analyze it.” With this
explanation and with the help of a ten thousand
dollar grant from The Good Will Fund of the
late Edward A. Filene, the Institute began its
work. During the first year of its existence, its
staff published fifteen letters of propaganda
analysis, widely circulated among educators and
laymen.

This volume is made up of those fifteen brief
studies of current propaganda, as well as “News
from Europe,” the initial study of the Insti-
tute’s second year. Included also are new ma-
terials, consisting of discussion suggestions and
study outlines, to aid adult and student groups
in the analysis of today’s propaganda. This vol-
ume should, therefore, be of value not only to
the individual citizen but especially to students,
teachers, and adults who use the Institute’s Oc-
tober, 1938 publication, The Group Leader's
Guide to Propaganda Analysis, prepared by
Miss Violet Edwards, its educational director. 1
Students and adults using this volume and The
Group Leader's Guide to Propaganda Analysis
may wish to supplement both with the Insti-
tute’s “Survey of Opinion” tests, prepared with
the assistance of Mr. Edward Glaser.

Basic to propaganda analysis is an alert and
critical but an emotionally-detached examina-
tion 2 of controversial issues and of the opinions
which flow from them — opinions which usu-
ally carry a high charge of emotion. Basic, too,
to the process of propaganda analysis are free
discussion and the expression of many points
of view by all members of a study group. Most
of us know only too well that it is easy to sub-
mit, to obey, to conform, or to “call names’'
ourselves, but that it is far harder to join with
others in discussion of common problems and
to reach decisions on the basis of recognition
of the problems themselves and on reckoning
with the relevant facts.

Without the interest and cooperation of
many able friends the Institute could not have
carried on the work of its first year. We regret
that the names of all these persons and groups
cannot be mentioned here. A few, however,
must be recorded, so great have been their
contributions.

The Institute is particularly grateful to the
late Edward A. Filene for his interest and sup-
port, and to members of the Good Will Fund
board who seek to realize the goals of Mr.
Filene’s social vision.

1 The Group Leader's Guide to Propaganda Analysis
supplants the Institute’s publication of January, 1938,
Propaganda— How to Recognize It and Deal with It,
which, with its study suggestions and materials, was used
in a nation-wide experimental study program, partici-
pated in by more than 400 high schools, colleges, and
universities.

2 It follows, of course, that in such study we retain an
emotional drive for clarity of thought, for solving the
problem at hand. We also utilize this emotional drive

to realize in beneficial action the facts revealed by clear
thinking. For example, men and women have had all-
consuming emotional drives to eliminate smallpox, ty-
phoid, and cancer. To achieve their ends in research
they kept in check irrelevant emotions. And, finally,
with facts in hand they, with the help of others, have
given to millions of people the emotional drive to accept
the facts concerning these diseases and to act in accord-
ance with those facts.

PREFACE

Without the interest and able assistance of
its own Advisory Board, the Institute’s first vol-
ume of propaganda analysis and study mate-
rials could not have been realized.

The Institute acknowledges the extensive ex-
perimental work carried on in cooperating high
schools, colleges, and universities throughout
the country, which made possible many of the
fine study suggestions in this volume. Among
those institutions are the following: Univer-
sity experimental high schools of Teachers Col-
lege, Columbia University (especially the
Horace Mann School); of Northwestern Uni-
versity; of Ohio State University; of Stanford
University; of Milwaukee State Teachers Col-
lege; of Colorado State College of Education.

Public high schools of Rock Island, Illinois;
of Clayton, Missouri; of Manhattan, Kansas;
of Newark, New Jersey (especially the Weequa-
hick High School); of Gloversville, New York;
of Bronxville, New York; of Pasadena, Cali-
fornia; and of Honolulu, Hawaii.

College classes of Stephens College, Mills
College, the University of Missouri, Illinois
State Teachers College, Ohio State University,
Northwestern University, Pasadena Junior Col-
lege, Colorado State College of Education, and
many others.

The Institute is greatly indebted for their
cooperation to such organizations (and their in-
dividual members) as the following: The Pro-
gressive Education Association, the Stanford
University Language Arts Investigation, the
Denver and Pasadena Boards of Education.

Grateful acknowledgment is made also to Mr.

Charles A. Seidle, of Lehigh University, for-
merly assistant to the secretary of the Institute,
for his able assistance in the editing of the
monthly issues of Propaganda Analysis and of
the discussion notes for this volume; to Harold
Lavine, now editorial director of the Institute,
for assistance in preparing several studies; to
Professor George W. Hartmann, of Columbia
University, and to Professor John G. Pilley, of
Wellesley College, formerly of Bristol Univer-
sity, England, for their helpful counsel; to Miss
Helen I. Davis, of DeWitt Clinton High School,
New York City, for critical reading of manu-
scripts; and to Professor Robert A. Brady, of
the University of California, for material of
great value in the Institute’s analysis of German
Fascist propaganda.

Finally, for methods and suggestions for
bringing about group study, discussion, and
follow-up activities, the Institute and its mem-
bers are particularly indebted to Miss Violet
Edwards and to Mr. Frank Walser. In preparing
this valuable material, which should do much
to make the monthly letters not only arouse but
sustain constructive follow-up study and well-
balanced free discussion, Mr. Walser has drawn
upon his extensive work and research in the
field of group discussion with adults and with
young people.

Clyde R. Miller

Secretary

Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Inc.

New York City
October 15, 1938

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

MINIMUM REFERENCE SHELF . . . .

ANNOUNCEMENT

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes .

HOW TO DETECT PROPAGANDA . . .

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes .

SOME ABC’S OF PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS
Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes .

HOW TO ANALYZE NEWSPAPERS . . .

PAGE

iii

5
8

NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS 16

The Press and Political Leadership , by Irving Brant 19

A 1938 Press Job , from <( Editor and Publisher” 25

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 27

THE MOVIES AND PROPAGANDA 29

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 32

WHAT’S BENEATH THE LABEL? 33

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 36

PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES OF GERMAN FASCISM .

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes

PROPAGANDA ON THE AIR ....

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes

5 6

THE FORD SUNDAY EVENING HOUR 57

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 60

vii

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

viii

PAGE

THE PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL AND PROPAGANDA . . . 61

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 64

PROPAGANDA: SOME ILLUSTRATIONS 65

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 68

SPECIAL LETTERS ON THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

Letter of May 16 , 1938 69

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 72

Letter of June 16, 1938 72

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 76

Letter of July 16, 1938 76

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 79

NEWS FROM EUROPE 80

Suggested Activities and Discussion Notes 83

Introduction

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS

T HE study and analysis of propaganda is a
new field filled with useful possibilities,
a challenge to the resourceful group leader or
teacher. Here are a few suggestions. All who
engage in this study are invited to send further
suggestions to the Institute for Propaganda
Analysis. Thus a body of useful and tried
methods may be built up gradually.

There are two main ways by which the stu-
dent of propaganda can educate himself in the
mental alertness and independence of thought
needed to recognize and deal with propaganda:
First, he should study and analyze the propa-
ganda he sees most closely. Second, he should
observe himself and his friends engaging con-
sciously or unconsciously in propaganda when
discussing some vital controversial problem.

A. Studying and analyzing propaganda :

i . Members of the discussion group may collect use-
ful data on the propaganda devices used in their
own homes, communities, and organizations, in
large national groups.

2. To do this the work may be divided according to
the members’ particular interests. Some may wish
to study the propaganda effects of the movies,
news reels; radio programs, news commentators;
newspaper cartoons, editorials, columnists, adver-
tisements; periodicals; public relations counsels.
Others may wish to study the propaganda ef-
fects of educational meetings, concerts, lectures,
churches; school clubs, student activities; text
books, novels, etc.

3- Each member of the discussion group should keep
a work book on propaganda. In it he should paste
newspaper items, editorials, cartoons, radio scripts,
theatre programs, advertisements, copies of or ex-
cerpts from speeches, etc., underlining words and
phrases and noting specifically how these have
been used for propaganda.

4. The whole group can participate in writing and
giving short dramatic sketches in which thought-
provoking propaganda appears for both of two
opposed points of view.

B. Propaganda in discussion of controversial
issues:

1 . Members of the group should be urged to respect
mutual criticism.

2. Short questionnaires concerning the main issues

of the discussion should be answered before and
again following the discussion.

3. Occasionally in the midst of a heated argument,
the discussion should be stopped suddenly and the
attention of the group turned to the diverse atti-
tudes expressed by the members and the reasons
for this diversity.

4. Similar in intent is the writing of a short “intel-
lectual autobiography.” After the third or fourth
meeting each member of the group should be
urged to write such an autobiography indicating
as honestly and fairly as possible what beliefs
(political, economic, social, religious) he holds
and why (from whom did he get them, how long
has he held them, what are his best reasons for
continuing to hold them). Tentative theories and
major issues about which one has not yet reached
a decision should also be indicated. These auto-
biographies need not be shown to other members
of the group, although greater value comes from
frankly discussing them.

5. Two or three members of the group may observe
the discussion from an inconspicuous place and
later report for discussion the propaganda devices
used by participants.

6. In every discussion an effort should be made to
avoid “either-or” solutions. Seek additional alter-
native solutions.

7. Each discussion group should keep minutes or a
log of discussions. Record the members present,
the subject discussed, the major issues raised, the
alternative solutions offered, the consensus (if one
is reached), the prevalence of propaganda devices
in the members’ presentations of their points of
view, special assignments, and further suggestions.

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE
DISCUSSION LEADER

Whatever the discussion leader may person-
ally believe, he should allow every member of
the group to do his own thinking. This may
require time and patience, but in the long run
it is the only effective method.

It is wise for different members of the group
to take turns leading the discussion. Again, this
may take more time, but it is valuable experi-
ence which every member who is willing and
able should have. It makes the individual mem-
ber see more clearly the purpose of a discussion
and it makes him a better participant in other
discussions.

It is not an easy matter to lead a discussion.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

The discussion leader should approach his task
humbly and with much preparation both in the
techniques of discussion leading and in the
subject under consideration.

The suggestions below and the following
section on discussion outlines are particularly
intended to help discussion and group leaders,
teachers, students, and participants in discus-
sions. A bibliography for additional study of
the techniques of discussion leading is ap-
pended at the end of this introduction. It should
be remembered that these suggestions are only
to help the discussion leader get started. After
the discussion gets under way, he must be alert
to all that is being said and to some things
which are not said. At all times he must be
courteous and helpful, even when he is restrict-
ing the time of a member who has spoken too
frequently or who is beginning to repeat him-
self.

Here are four specific suggestions for discus-
sion leaders:

1. One way of “warming up” the group is by using
questions and getting the members to hunt up
facts impartially. Thus with tact and skill the
leader furthers the individual’s thinking process.
In no way should he invite or suggest certain con-
clusions, although he may, when asked, volunteer
his own opinion at the conclusion of the discussion.

2. When a discussion is based on a set of questions,
as those following each section in this book, the
whole list should not be read aloud at the begin-
ning, but should be presented one at a time with
such improvised additions as may stir the group’s
imagination and interest.

The questions and suggested activities listed in
this volume have been carefully prepared with a
certain sequence. The leader should be thoroughly
familiar with them before beginning the discus-
sion . Nothing will help him so much as foresight
and careful planning in advance. More questions
and suggestions are proposed for each section than
can adequately be covered in one or two meetings.
If possible , a sufficient number of meetings should
be scheduled to cover them all; if not , the discus-
sion leader should choose the items most pertinent
for his group.

3. Keep in mind the purpose of this whole study.
It is not to agree or even to arrive at a conclusion
(although these are valuable), but to develop in-
dependent, critical minds which shall be strong in
the face of the contrary winds and confusion of
prejudice.

4. During a discussion the members of the group
jointly explore a given issue. One of the chief
tasks of the discussion leader is to see that the
discussion remains on the main highway. It is

always interesting to explore by-paths; and the
group may decide that this is what it wants to do.
But usually it is much better to keep the main
issue and its development before the members.
If a digression is felt advisable, the leader should
be entirely conscious of the changed direction the
discussion is taking.

5. A discussion develops much as a pattern develops
in weaving. The discussion outline which the
leader has in mind might be thought of as the
warp on a loom or the first threads. The contribu-
tions to the discussion might be thought of as the
weft or the cross threads w T oven into the warp to
complete the pattern. The discussion leader is
the weaver who sees the whole pattern, weaves the
different parts together, and finds a place for each
contribution. He does this by constantly review-
ing and summarizing the points which have been
made, by clarifying and defining conflicting issues
and opinions, and by raising questions about parts
of the discussion which he believes should be pur-
sued further.

6. One of the things that can most help discussion to
be vital and meaningful is to support it and follow
it with action. For instance, if before the first dis-
cussion of propaganda every member has first
asked five people for a definition of propaganda,
this preliminary activity will almost certainly in-
sure a good discussion. As for follow-up action,
particular propagandas might be studied and re-
ported at the second meeting.

PREPARATION AND USE OF A
DISCUSSION OUTLINE

An outline is a kind of chart or blue-print of
the way in which a particular subject will be
developed. The author of an article, the de-
liverer of a speech, the leader of a discussion
should prepare a careful outline of his subject.
The author fills in his outline by writing a com-
plete article. The lecturer fills in his outline as
he speaks. The discussion leader need not and
should not follow his outline so closely as the
author and speaker. But for himself his outline
is just as necessary.

Here are the main purposes of a discussion
outline:

The primary value of a discussion outline is to
help the leader foresee some of the problems and
comments which may be presented by the group. It
is a way of thinking through the whole issue, of pre-
paring one’s self to direct the discussion and to relate
to each other and to the main parts of the subject
the various contributions from the members of the
group.

The secondary value is that the leader will have
before him a framework for the development of the

INTRODUCTION

subject. This framework or outline will contain some
of the points which he believes will be and should be
raised for a careful consideration of the subject. He
should be cautioned, however, to remember that the
outline is only his approach, that the purpose of the
discussion is to share opinions and not to have him
lecture. The purpose of the discussion outline, there-
fore, is to help the leader see the problem more
clearly and so to lead the discussion more expertly.

In preparing a discussion outline and in
helping the members of a discussion group
think through solutions for a given problem or
set of issues, the following twelve steps have
been found helpful in actual practice and
should greatly aid new discussion leaders,
teachers, and students. There are other theo-
ries about discussion leading and other ways
of making outlines. These suggestions are made
to help the untried discussion leader get started.
He is strongly urged to consult the bibliography
at the end of the introduction, to observe
critically other discussion leaders, and, most
important of all, constantly and critically to
study his own methods for ways of improving
them.

1. State the problem or issue clearly.

The group usually chooses the general area for
discussion. In preparing his outline the leader should
state the issue or problem very clearly. This may take
the form of a question or of a declarative sentence.
For instance, the group may have decided to discuss
“Good Propaganda." The leader must find an issue
in this area. He might choose “Good Propaganda Is
the Same As Education." In stating the issue remem-
ber that facts as facts cannot be discussed; only opin-
ions can be discussed. The best issue is one about
which the different members of the group have
strongly conflicting opinions.

2 . Explore different definitiojis and statements
of the problem ; add illustrative material.

Here the leader prepares a brief three or four
minute introduction showing the basis of the dis-
cussion, relating it to previous discussions, and indi-
cating some of the main sub-issues and the limits of
the discussion. This is presented to the group. In
preparing his outline he should consider different
definitions and statements of the problem so that he
will be ready to meet these when they arise in the
discussion. For instance, for the illustration given, he
will want to have at hand several definitions of
“good," “propaganda," and “education." In the ac-
tual discussion, however, he should have the group
prepare its own definitions or see clearly where their
conflicting definitions differ. He should also have at
hand illustrations to make the issue more personal

and meaningful. These are often in the form of ques-
tions, as “Is all propaganda good? Is propaganda for
our club good? Is it good for everyone?" etc.

3. Explore large social or national phases of the
problem.

While personal illustrations are necessary to incite
interest, the leader should have thought through
wider implications of the problem in order to keep
the group from being bogged down by too personal
considerations of the issue. One of the greatest values
of discussion is to widen the observations and to
broaden the thinking of the group. For instance,
“Does the education in our community differ from
that in another community in our state? Nation? If
what we have discussed and defined as ‘good propa-
ganda’ here is education in our schools, is it ‘good
propaganda’ and is it ‘education’ in other schools?"

4. Analyze differences of opinions.

In preparing the outline, the leader should think
through as many of the different opinions as possible.
These, as such, should not be presented to the group,
but they should be drawn from the members of the
group by questions and discussion. The thinking of
the group should be directed toward analyzing and
clarifying these differences. Above all else, well led
discussions should teach us to see more clearly where,
how, and why our opinions differ. For instance, some
members of the group may feel that no propaganda
is “good"; others may believe that some propaganda
can be “good," but that even “good" propaganda and
education are different; while others may believe
that “good" propaganda and education are the same.
In his preliminary study the leader should determine
as well as possible just where these differences will
come and their bases. The differences frequently
arise because we do not define or use words the same
way. Members of the group should be asked to rede-
fine their positions clearly, to see that they are talk-
ing about the same things.

At this point in the discussion the leader should
summarize these differences. His task will be much
easier if in his outline he has given careful attention
to different opinions. But in the discussion sum-
mary he must summarize the opinions as expressed
by the group, although if he believes that other im-
portant view points have been omitted, he may well
include these in his summary.

Here the discussion may be terminated. Its pur-
pose has been to clarify conflicting opinions about
the issue.

If the group wishes to pursue the discussion
further, the discussion leader should follow his
summary with a brief statement of some of the
facts involved in the particular problem, sources
for locating these, and ways in which these may
be used. This is the “development of the discus-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

xii

sion,” and its treatment is indicated in steps
5 to 9-

5. Accumulate facts.

One way out of an impasse is to ask for facts.
Some members may have been making too sweeping
statements on mere hear-say. In preparing his out-
line, the leader should secure some facts for the
problem. For the illustration given above he will
want to have at hand opinions of recognized stu-
dents of propaganda and education, some knowl-
edge of what is taught in our schools and how it is
taught, some figures about the number of people
who receive formal education and thus about their
exposure to what some people call “good” propa-
ganda. The group should be urged to accumulate
similar facts.

6. Verify the facts.

For the leader this is one of the most difficult
parts of the discussion. It will be easier if he is
familiar with sources of information and “authori-
ties.” These should be indicated in his outline so
that he can help the members of the group inter-
pret their facts by asking such questions as, “Who
collected the facts? For what purpose? When? Where?
How? Are we justified in using them to support our
opinions?”

7. Analyze consequences .

In his outline the leader will want to consider
some of the consequences of the different points of
view. When he leads the discussion, he will be better
prepared to help the members of the group dig be-
low the surface opposition of views, as expressed,
to see if there is more potential agreement under-
neath. For instance, most of the members may love
America’s tradition of freedom. They may want
their children’s minds to develop freely and they
may want them to do their own thinking. The leader
might guide the discussion away from the “back
and forth” of argument and counter argument to
an analysis of the consequences of this and then of
that solution or opinion. If “good” propaganda is
education, what effect has this on our educational
system? On our teaching? etc. The same questions
.in be asked about other opinions.

8. Trace differences to differing assumptions.

After facts have been presented and consequences
explored, we are ready for a discussion of our dif-
fering assumptions or philosophies. These should
have been considered by the leader in his outline.
This is another way of helping members see why
they disagree. What assumptions do we hold about
the goodness and badness of propaganda? About
the people who are affected by it? About its use by
teachers? About informal education? etc. Never try

to get agreement on all points. Narrow the disagree-
ments, state them sharply and clearly, show how one
set of assumptions (about the educability of the
mass of the people, for instance) affect our opinions
and points of view.

9. Review the situation on the basis of general
agreement.

Opinions have been stated, definitions given, im-
plications of the problem explored, differences ana-
lyzed, facts presented, consequences analyzed, and
assumptions as bases of opinions related to differ-
ences. Now the leader is ready to summarize the dis-
cussion, to indicate the chief places where the group
agreed and where it “agreed to disagree.”

Here the discussion may be terminated, or it
may be desirable to continue the discussion for
the purpose of majority agreement upon one
solution and the determination of methods for
putting that solution into practice. In many
discussions this is neither necessary nor desir-
able. In other cases, however, there should be a
willingness, even a demand, to carry over into
our behavior the conclusion of a discussion.
This is when what is spoken of more narrowly
as “action” is demanded. Steps 10 to 12 suggest
procedure for discussion leading to action.

10. Choose from the solutions proposed.

From the various proposals presented the group
should democratically choose the one it wishes to
follow.

11. Word the solution.

This may be done by the group as a whole or,
and usually this is easier, by a committee and re-
ferred back to the group.

12. Find icays and means of putting solution
into practice.

This calls for realistic discussion of action.

USE OF THE DISCUSSION NOTES

The suggestions in this introduction and the
“Suggested Activities and Discussion” follow-
ing each monthly issue of PROPAGANDA
ANALYSIS are offered as a bridge between the
material contained in the letters and the discus-
sion group.

The problems of one issue may well be dis-
cussed at several meetings. If the problem is too
large for one meeting, the leader may divide it
into its component parts, and discuss one part
at each meeting.

INTRODUCTION

1 . The problem for discussion .

Study carefully the problem as you face it in your
own locality, following suggestions made in the dis-
cussion notes. It may be wise with a new group to
start discussion with a controversial problem which
has not already become too emotionalized in the
community. Use a problem whose discussion will
reveal the use of propaganda, but not at first one
which represents a very bitter conflict.

2. Preparing the group for discussion.

Discussion is a rather loose word used to cover
the verbal exchange in all kinds of meetings. In
many cases the members of the group do not coop-
erate. They differ but are not effective in clarifying
their differences. They never quite define the real
problem.

Effective discussion is a new art which must be
learned slowly and carefully. Only through discus-
sion and the wholesome sharing of opinions do we
learn the great educative value of discussion.

People unused to discussion tend, when opposed
in their views, to take a rigid either-or attitude. The
members of the group should consciously avoid this
and should adopt the attitude which says, “We may
both be right; but perhaps neither your view nor
mine is quite broad, fundamental, and inclusive
enough. Let us seek other views.”

It may be helpful to remind the group at the be-
ginning of every meeting that, however important
the values at stake in the problem to be discussed,
truth is being sought, accuracy is essential to think-
ing, and impersonal criticism should be sought and
listened to receptively.

If this is done patiently members will more and
more frequently stop short in their most heated
arguments and remember that doubt has its place,
that criticism is good for mental growth.

DISCUSSION AND PROPAGANDA

If we are to understand propaganda, we must
catch ourselves using it. There is need for and
value in critical study and analysis of adver-

tisements, newspapers, and other channels of
communication. The danger in such studies is
that we begin to feel smug and mentally supe-
rior to the other people who don’t recognize
propaganda. To offset this danger we need
more self-criticism. We need a definite planning
of situations which call forth our own use of
propaganda. These occur when we find our-
selves opposed by other members of the group,
who feel as strongly as we do, but on opposite
sides of the question. We suddenly find our-
selves using all the tricks of the propagandists—
we call the theories which we don’t like “com-
munist” or “reactionary,” “pacifist” or “mili-
tary,” without real reference to the meanings of
these terms. We label the things we like with
glittering generalities— “democratic,” “private
enterprise,” “for the good of all,” again without
defining just what we mean.

Two methods may be utilized to make special
use of discussions for study of propaganda:

1. Two or three members might act as observers
of the discussion. At the end of the meeting they
might report the propaganda devices used.

2. At the most heated part of the discussion, the
leader can suddenly break in, call for a minute or
two of silent reflection. The emotionalism and ex-
aggeration of the proponents will be brought into
almost comical relief. It will then be highly reveal-
ing to turn the group’s attention to the situations
which have caused some members to feel strongly
on one side of the question and others on other
sides. This will help explain much about the sources
and nature of propaganda.

The fact to underline is that as long as mem-
bers of the group search for an understanding
of propaganda and motives used by others, they
may learn much of value; but they will not see
the real subtlety of propaganda and propa-
gandists until they turn the spotlight of critical
thinking on themselves, their theories, and their
behavior.

Minimum Reference Shelf

T HE annotated bibliography which follows
suggests a minimum number of the best
books on propaganda, discussion methods, and
education for democracy . 1 2 It is planned to as-
sist the group leader and the group member in
their study and discussion of propaganda and
of public opinion. It includes essential books on
background and method to help the leader ap-
preciate the significance and far-reaching con-
sequences of his work. The zvhy is as important
as the how.

The most intelligent way to become an ef-
fective group leader or group member is to
combine experience with reading. This means
choosing from the following skeleton lists those
books, those chapters or pages, which corre-
spond with the experience one is having as a
member or a leader of a group. Because there
are many kinds of groups, various types of dis-
cussion, and a large number of different diffi-
culties which confront group study, it is im-
portant that the leader or member choose the
book or bulletin which definitely speaks to his
own difficulties and approach to group work.

A. TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF PROPAGANDA

Sumner, William G., Folkways , Ginn & Co., Boston,
1906. Detailed analyses of the customs, mores, and
folkways of society. Chapters I and V are especially
recommended for the student of public opinion.
Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Inc., 130 Morn-
ingside Drive, New York City. The Group Lead-
er's Guide to Propaganda Analysis , 1938. Experi-
mental study materials for use in high schools, in
colleges, and in adult study groups; by Violet
Edwards.

Robinson, J. H., The Mind in the Making , Harper
8c Bros., New York and London, 1921. A brief,
simple and clear presentation of the relation of
intelligence to social reform.

White, Andrew Dickson, History of the Warfare Be-
tween Science and Theology in Christendom , Ap-
pleton, New York, 1910. A classic interpretation
of a major conflict which for centuries gave rise
to propaganda in all of its manifestations. Two
volumes.

1 Many other references, which should be helpful, are
suggested in the text of the sixteen letters which make
up this publication.

2 See Appendix of The Group Leader's Guide to Propa-

Doob, Leonard W., Propaganda— Its Psychology and
Technique, Henry Holt, New York, 1935. Con-
sideration of propaganda as a means of social con-
trol, as a method by which individuals or groups
work for their own interests; and the effect of
propaganda upon individuals and upon society as
a whole.

Lippman, Walter, Public Opinion, Harcourt, Brace
& Co., New York, 1922. Showing the dependence
of opinion on prejudice and the factors which
color judgment. See discussion of the stereotype.

Lumley, Frederick R., The Propaganda Menace,
D. Appleton-Century, New York, 1933. A sociolo-
gist looks at propaganda and at the “definers” of
propaganda, who disagree as to what is propa-
ganda.

Odegard, Peter H., The American Public Mind, Co-
lumbia University Press, New York, 1930. An easy-
to-read analysis of public opinion. The eleven
brief chapters take the “mysticism” out of the
phrase, “public opinion.”

National Council for the Social Studies. Seventh
Yearbook: Education Against Propaganda (Elmer
Ellis, editor), published by the council at Harvard
L T niversity, 1937. The implications of propaganda
for education and particularly for the social studies
in American schools today.

Graves, W. Brooks, Readings in Public Opinion ; Its
Formation and Control, D. Appleton 8c Co., New
York, 1928. Rich study and discussion material
concerning the formation and control of public
opinion.

Riegel, O. W., Mobilizing for Chaos: The Story of
the New Propaganda, Yale University Press, New
Haven, Conn., 1934. A study of the “propaganda
of nationalism,” particularly in the authoritarian
nations.

B. FOR A CAREFUL STUDY OF DISCUSSION METHOD'

Sheffield, A. D., Creative Discussion, Associated Press,
New York, 1927:1931. Brief statement of what it’s
all about. This little book will answer the first
questions of discussion groups.

Elliott, H. S., The Process of Group Thinking,
Associated Press, New York, 1928. Complete and
detailed study of the technique of discussion, full
of sensible suggestions of what to do and what not
to do. Especially valuable for group leaders.

ganda Analysis, 1938 revision of the study materials of
the Institute for Propaganda .Analysis, for inexpensive
bulletins concerning discussion methods.

XVI

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

Walser, Frank, The Art of Conference , Harper 8c
Bros., New York, 1933. Analysis under twelve
heads of the technical difficulties of discussion and
of the use of pauses, and of the ways to deal with
disagreement. Followed by 100 pages of case
studies of successful and unsuccessful conferences
in all fields.

Fansler, Thomas, Discussion Method for Adult
Groups , American Association for Adult Educa-
tion, New York, 1934. A study of discussions that
were recorded word for word. The critical com-
ments of the author on what was said contains
many useful lessons in method.

Studebaker, John L., The American Way , McGraw-
Hill, New York, 1935. Describes fruitful discus-
sion and the principles of democracy at work in
the Des Moines (Iowa) forums.

Bowman, LeRoy C., How to Lead a Discussion , The
Woman’s Press, New York, 1934. Short guide for
the use of group leaders. Valuable for beginning
groups.

Busch, Henry M., Leadership in Group Work,
Associated Press, 1934. While this book touches
only incidentally on discussion, it is of interest
because it examines many of the basic issues
underlying all group activity and leadership.

Ewing, R. L., Methods of Conducting Forums and
Discussions, Association Press, New York, 1926.
Useful for leaders. Detailed outlines are given of
programs and procedures.

C. ON DEMOCRACY, ADULT EDUCATION, AND DISCUSSION

Cartwright, Morse A., Ten Years of Adult Education,
MacMillan Company, New York, 1935. Abound-

ing in useful facts and history of adult education.

Landis, Benson Y., Rural Adult Education , Mac-
Millan Company, New York, 1933.

Lindeman, E. C., Social Education, The Republic
Publishing Company, New York, 1933. An inter-
pretation of the principles and methods of adult
education by means of discussion.

Lindeman, E. C., The Meaning of Adult Education,
The Republic Publishing Company, New York,
1926.

Dewey, John, How We Think, D. C. Heath and
Company, New York, 1933. According to Dewey
the significance of an idea must be judged by its
practical consequences.

Clarke, E. L., The Art of Straight Thinking, Apple-
ton, New York, 1929. An excellent review of the
difficulties which must be overcome in thinking
habits if discussion is to be successful.

Kilpatrick, William H., Education and the Social
Crisis, Liveright, New York, 1932. The place of
discussion in the adult education movement, and
whether education shall lead or follow in the
process of social change. By one of the leading
disciples of Dewey.

Pigors, Paul, Leadership or Domination , Houghton
Mifflin, New York, 1935.

Overstreet, Harry A., About Ourselves, Norton.
New York, 1927.

Thouless, Robert H., Straight and Crooked. Think-
ing, Simon 8c Schuster, New York, 1932. Some
pitfalls in argument and straight thinking, with
many illustrations of crooked thinking and
methods of discussion.

Propaganda Analysis

A Bulletin to Help the Intelligent Citizen Detect and Analyze Propaganda

INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS, INC.

13O MORNINGSIDE DRIVE : NEW YORK CITY

Volume I OCTOBER, 1937 Number 1

Announcement

HE INSTITUTE FOR PROPAGANDA
ANALYSIS is a non-profit corporation or-
ganized for scientific research in methods used
by propagandists in influencing public opinion.
It will conduct a continuous survey and analysis
of propagandas. By objective and scientific scru-
tiny of the agencies, techniques, and devices
utilized in the formation of public opinion, it
will seek to show how to recognize propaganda
and appraise it.

The Board of Directors and the Advisory
Board include:

Charles A. Beard, American historian, specialist in
democratic government

Frank E. Baker, President of Milwaukee State T each-
ers College

Percy S. Brown, Good Will Fund
Hadley Cantril, Associate Professor of Psychology,
Princeton University

Edgar Dale, Associate Professor of Education, Ohio
State University

Ned H. Dearborn, Dean of the Division of General
Education, New York University
Paul Douglas, Professor of Economics, University
of Chicago

F. Ernest Johnson, Professor of Education, Teachers
College, Columbia University
E. C. Lindeman, Professor of Social Philosophy, New
York School of Social Work
Robert S. Lynd, Professor of Sociology, Columbia
University

Kirtley Mather, Professor of Geology, Harvard
University

Ernest O. Melby, Dean of the School of Education,
Northwestern University

Clyde R. Miller, Associate Professor of Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University
James T. Shotwell, Professor of History, Columbia
University

Robert K. Speer, Professor of Education, New York
University

Officers: President, Hadley Cantril; vice president,
Ernest O. Melby; secretary, Clyde R. Miller; treas-
urer, Robert K. Speer.

There is today especial need for propaganda
analysis. America is beset by a confusion of con-
flicting propagandas, a Babel of voices, warn-
ings, charges, counter-charges, assertions, and
contradictions assailing us continually through
press, radio, and newsreel. These propagandas
are disseminated by political parties, labor
unions, business organizations, farm organiza-
tions, patriotic societies, churches, schools, and
other agencies; also by word of mouth by mil-
lions of individuals.

If American citizens are to have clear under-
standing of conditions and what to do about
them, they must be able to recognize propa-
ganda, to analyze, and to appraise it.

But what is propaganda?

As generally understood, propaganda is ex-
pression of opinion or action by individuals or
groups deliberately designed to influence opin-
ions or actions of other individuals or groups
ivith reference to predetermined ends.

Thus propaganda differs from scientific anal-
ysis. The propagandist is trying to “put some-
thing across/' good or bad, whereas the scientist
is trying to discover truth and fact. Often the
propagandist does not want careful scrutiny and
criticism; he wants to bring about a specific ac-
tion. Because the action may be socially bene-
ficial or socially harmful to millions of people,
it is necessary to focus upon the propagandist
and his activities the searchlight of scientific
scrutiny. Socially desirable propaganda will not
suffer from such examination, but the opposite
type will be detected and revealed for what it is.
Propaganda which concerns us most is that

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

which alters public opinion on matters of large
social consequence often to the detriment of the
majority of the people. Such propaganda, for
example, is involved in issues such as these:
Henry Ford and Tom Girdler should or should
not recognize the C.I.O.; Hitler and Mussolini
and many dignitaries of the Catholic Church
are right or wrong in siding against the Spanish
loyalists; Japan is right or wrong in attacking
China; Congress is right or wrong in rejecting
President Roosevelt’s Supreme Court plan; the
President is to blame or not to blame for not
knowing that Supreme Court Justice Black once
was or was not a member of the Ku Klux Klan;
“exposure” of Justice Black represents or does
not represent the interests of persons opposed
to the New Deal program of social legislation.

Propaganda and Democracy

Many opinions or propagandas are highly
charged with emotion, prejudice, bitterness.
People make a virtue of defending their own
opinions or propagandas. Many would deal
with opinions or propagandas they don’t like
by suppressing them, by violence, if need be.

_ But suppression of unpopular opinions or prop-
agandas is contrary to democratic conceptions
of government. A heresy or an unpopular prop-
aganda or opinion may be bad, or good. One
way to find out is by analysis and classification
according to types and interests. This way the
Institute for Propaganda Analysis will follow.

To deal with propaganda by suppression
through federal legislation would violate the
Constitution of the United States. “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the government for
a redress of grievances.”

These freedoms are the essence of democracy.
In terms of them, the Institute will subject
propagandas to scientific analysis and seek to
indicate whether they conform or not to Ameri-
can principles of democracy.

When does a propaganda co?iform to demo-
cratic principles ? It conforms when it tends to
preserve and extend democracy; it is antagonis-
tic when it undermines or destroys democracy.

Democracy has four parts, set forth or im-
plied in the Constitution and federal statutes:

1. Political— Freedom to vote on public is-
sues; freedom of press and speech to discuss
those issues in public gatherings, in press, radio,
motion pictures, etc.

2. Economic— Freedom to work and to par-
ticipate in organizations and discussions to pro-
mote better working standards and higher liv-
ing conditions for the people.

3. Social— Freedom from oppression based on
theories of superiority or inferiority.

4. Religious— Freedom of worship, with sep-
aration of church and state.

With all of these freedoms are associated re-
sponsibilities. Thus, with freedom of the press
goes the responsibility for accuracy in news and
honesty in editorials.

Propagandas of those who pay lip service to
the Constitution, if crystallized in action or law,
would destroy one or more of these freedoms.
Propagandas of others would preserve and ex-
tend these freedoms. These conflicting propa-
gandas, moreover, divergent as to goals, often
are similar in phrasing. Note for example the
similarities in planks in opposing political party
platforms, such as Socialist and Democratic,
Communist and Republican; or note the simi-
larity of labor and anti-labor propagandas.
Sound analysis is necessary to enable citizens to
distinguish these often-conflicting propagandas
and to evaluate them in democratic terms.

Inseparable from propaganda analysis are
periodic appraisals of controls over the chan-
nels through which opinions and propagandas
flow: press, radio, motion pictures, labor unions,
business and farm organizations, patriotic soci-
eties, churches, schools, and political parties.

What convictions, biases, and interests do
these channels represent or express? Do these
channels, by reason of bias, support and dis-
seminate certain opinions or propagandas, and
facts and alleged facts relating to them? Are
other opinions or propagandas opposed by
means of distortion, false emphasis, or censor-
ship? The Institute for Propaganda Analysis
will try to set up standards for appraising chan-
nels of propaganda as well as analyzing propa-
ganda itself. It will give particular attention
to “press agent” releases and “planned news”
which flood American editorial offices.

Why are many misled by propaganda antago-
nistic to democracy ? Few persons have had the
opportunity to learn how to detect and analyze
propaganda. Most books on propaganda are for

ANNO UN CEMENT

the benefit of the propagandist rather than for
the public. Others are in technical terms under-
stood only by persons familiar with the nomen-
clature of psychology and sociology. Further-
more, most of these treatises deal with propa-
gandas of the past, not of today. It is today's
propagandas flowing from today’s conflicts
which interest and concern us most. For ex-
ample, analysis of World War propagandas of
1914-1918 is not as significant today as analysis
of propagandas preparing perhaps for the next
World War. Propagandas used by Eugene Debs
and the employers in the Pullman Strike of
1894 are not as significant today as those being
used in 1937 by John Lewis and Homer Martin,
by Henry Ford and the Johnstown Citizens’
Committee. The emphasis which high schools
and colleges have given to dead issues of yester-
day to the neglect of the living issues of today
accounts for the fact that many high school and
college graduates can be easily misled by anti-
democratic propaganda.

What is the chief danger of propaganda? It
appeals to emotion, and decisions made under
stress of emotion often lead to disaster when the
emotion crowds out cool, dispassionate thought.

Students and teachers especially should know
how to deal with propaganda unemotionally.

Approximately sixteen million young people
between the ages of fourteen and twenty in the
next seven years will become voters. As such
they will decide issues affecting every aspect of
democratic freedom— political, economic, social,
and religious. They cannot wait until they are
twenty-one to learn how to decide issues unemo-
tionally, critically, thoughtfully. They must be
learning now how to avoid decisions antago-
nistic to democracy.

Do most Americans believe students should
analyze propaganda ? Yes. Dr. George Gallup,
director of the American Institute of Public
Opinion, in May 1936, polled the nation on the
question: “Should schools teach the facts about
all forms of government including Commu-
nism, Fascism and Socialism?” Dr. Gallup’s
findings were: “Sixty-two per cent of the voters
say the schools should teach the facts about all
forms of government including Communism,
Fascism and Socialism. Thirty-eight per cent say
the schools should not teach those facts.” It fol-
lows logically that teaching the facts involves
careful scrutiny of the conflicting propagandas
allegedly based on “the facts.”

Do teachers think analysis of propaganda
should be taught? Yes. In August 1937, several
professors at Teachers College, Columbia Uni-
versity and the School of Education of New
York University collaborated on a survey of
teacher opinion with regard to propaganda
analysis by students in high schools and col-
leges. They put the question to 500 teachers
representing all states in the union and all types
of schools. Ninety-eight per cent advocated a
critical study in the schools of propaganda
which would help prepare young people to
function as intelligent citizens in discussing and
voting on controversial issues; they said that
in treating such issues in the school, teaching
pupils how to think is more important than
teaching them what to think.

Will schools participate in propaganda anal-
ysis? Yes. Study units on how to detect and
analyze propaganda will be used this year in
Horace Mann and Lincoln Schools of Teachers
College, Columbia University; in the Public
Schools of Bronxville and Gloversville, New
York; in Rock Island, Illinois and Newton,
Massachusetts; in the State Teachers College at
Milwaukee; and in the University High School,
Northwestern University. These study units will
be made available to schools receiving Propa-
ganda Analysis.

Is there recognition of the need to analyze
facts, alleged facts, opinions, propaganda? Yes.
It is implied in the public forum movement;
in privately circulated letters for business men
prepared by such as the Kiplinger Washington
Agency, the Whaley-Eaton Service, Harland
Allen; in the New York Herald-Tribune An-
nual Forum on Current Problems; in various
college conferences on economics, politics, and
world issues; in recent editorials of the New
York Times (Sept. 1, 1937) and Springfield
Republican (Sept. 3, 1937); in the reports and
programs of the Foreign Policy Association, in
the privately circulated reports of Consumers
Union; in the programs and addresses of edu-
cators, clergymen, and editors at the Williams-
town Institute of Human Relations arranged
by the National Conference of Jews and Chris-
tians; and in various radio programs including
the University of Chicago Round Table and the
Town Meeting of the Air. H. G. Wells included
the study of propaganda in his blue print of a
new system of education before the 1937 meet-
ing of the British Association for the Advance-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

merit of Science, (New York Times, Sept. 5,
1937). All persons, according to his blue print,
should study propaganda and advertising meth-
ods as a corrective to newspaper reading.

“Free propaganda,” wrote the Springfield
Republican, Sept. 3, 1937, “is nothing but free
publicity for the views, interpretations, argu-
ments, pleadings, truths and untruths, half-lies
and lies of all creation. Propaganda is good as
well as bad. AVe are surrounded by clouds of
propaganda.’ ... It is up to each of us to pre-
cipitate from those clouds the true and the false,
the near-true and the near-false, identifying and
giving to each classification its correct label.”

In line with the foregoing opinions the Insti-
tute, by methods of education and scientific
research, will help the intelligent citizen detect
and analyze propaganda so that he may form
his own judgment as to what is good and bad.

The Institute’s second letter, to be issued
November 1, will set forth the devices most
commonly used by propagandists and will illus-
trate these with examples of propagandas taken
from current newspapers and magazines. Knowl-
edge of these devices enables the intelligent citi-
zen to detect much propaganda easily, some of
its instantaneously. By applying simple checks
much of it can be classified as conforming to or
antagonistic to democratic principles.

How will the Institute be financed? Money
to begin its work has been given by the Good
Will Fund, Inc., a charitable corporation fi-
nanced by the late Edward A. Filene. It is hoped
that eventually the Institute will be self-sup-
porting. Income from the sale of its letters and
donations from organizations and individuals
will be used to increase the scope of its research
and to permit it to issue special letters or bul-
letins when occasions warrant— occasions such

as tense political conflicts, great strikes, threats
of war.

The Institute invites intelligent citizens to
subscribe to its monthly letter. The cost is $2.00
a year. A subscription card is inclosed. Many
may desire to make Propaganda Analysis avail-
able to local high school and college students by
having the monthly letter sent to teachers of
social science, English, and journalism.

A Final Word

The Institute does not have all the answers;
it lays no claim to infallibility. It will try to be
scientific, objective, and accurate. If it makes
mistakes, it will acknowledge them. It asks those
who receive its letters to check its work; also to
cooperate with it by supplying documented evi-
dence on the sources of propaganda, and of
censorship or distortion of essential news in
press, radio, and newsreels. Chiefly the Institute
will try to acquaint its subscribers with methods
whereby they may become proficient in making
their own analyses .

The charter of the Institute, under which it
is organized as a non-profit corporation, con-
tains the following statement of its purposes:
“To assist the public in detecting and analyzing
propaganda by conducting scientific research
and education in the methods by which public
opinion is influenced, by the analysis of propa-
ganda methods and devices, and by the distri-
bution of reports thereon.

“It shall not be within the purposes or powers
of the corporation to engage in propaganda or
otherwise attempt to influence legislation and
the corporation shall not, either as one of its
purposes or as a means of furthering any of
its purposes, engage in propaganda or other-
wise attempt to influence legislation.”

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. Ask various people how they would define be stopped? What would a dictator do in this re-

“propaganda.” Try to secure as many definitions as spect? What should a democracy do?

possible. Don’t consult a dictionary, simply get per- 6. Some people see in the free flow of propagandas
sonal opinions and theories. Have the group discuss the danger of confusion and division in a democracy,

these definitions and build its own definition. Do Do you think these negative effects are present? If so,

you accept the definition printed in the first issue of can they be prevented? How?

Propaganda Analysis ? 7. What are we doing in our own communities

2. Why is propaganda effective? to counteract some of the negative effects of propa-

3. Is there any “good” propaganda or is all propa- ganda? Could we do more? Should we do more?

ganda “bad” ? 8. What are the best ways to help people think

4. Should the Government stop “bad” propa- critically? Does our modern education use these

ganda? methods?

5. Who should decide which propaganda should 9. What makes people think the way they do?

Volume I

NOVEMBER, 1937

Number 2

How to Detect Propaganda

\ A 7E ARE fooled by propaganda chiefly be-
V V cause we don’t recognize it when we see it.
It may be fun to be fooled but, as the cigarette
ads used to say, it is more fun to know. We can
more easily recognize propaganda when we see
it if we are familiar with the seven common
propaganda devices. These are:

1. The Name Calling Device

2. The Glittering Generalities Device

3. The Transler Device

4. T he Testimonial Device

5. The Plain Folks Device

6. The Card Stacking Device

7. The Band Wagon Device

Why are we fooled by these devices? Because
they appeal to our emotions rather than to our
reason. They make us believe and do something
we would not believe or do if we thought about
it calmly, dispassionately. In examining these
devices, note that they work most effectively at
those times when we are too lazy to think for
ourselves; also, they tie into emotions which
sway us to be “for” or “against” nations, races,
religions, ideals, economic and political policies
and practices, and so on through automobiles,
cigarettes, radios, toothpastes, presidents, and
wars. With our emotions stirred, it may be fun
to be fooled by these propaganda devices, but it
is more fun and infinitely more to our own in-
terests to know how they work.

Lincoln must have had in mind citizens who
could balance their emotions with intelligence
when h^ made his remark: . . but you can’t
fool ajl of the people all of the time.”

Name Calling

“Name Calling” is a device to make us form a
judgment without examining the evidence on
which it should be based. Here the propagandist
appeals to our hate and fear. He does this by
giving“bad names” to those individuals, groups,
nations, races, policies, practices, beliefs, and
ideals which he would have us condemn and
reject. For centuries the name “heretic” was
bad. Thousands were oppressed, tortured, or
put to death as heretics. Anybody who dissented

from popular or group belief or practice was in
danger of being called a heretic. In the light of
today’s knowledge, some heresies were bad and
some were good. Many of the pioneers of mod-
ern science were called heretics; witness the
cases of Copernicus, Galileo, Bruno. (See “A
History of the Warfare of Science with Theol-
ogy,” Andrew Dickson White, D. Appleton 8c
Co.) Today’s bad names include: Fascist, dema-
gogue, dictator. Red, financial oligarchy, Com-
munist, muck-raker, alien, outside agitator, eco-
nomic royalist, Utopian, rabble-rouser, trouble-
maker, Tory, Constitution wrecker.

“Al” Smith called Roosevelt a Communist by
implication when he said in his Liberty League
speech, “There can be only one capital, Wash-
ington or Moscow.” When “Al” Smith was run-
ning for die presidency many called him a tool
of die Pope, saying in effect, “We must choose
between Washington and Rome.” That implied
that Mr. Smith, if elected President, would take
his orders from the Pope. Recently, Mr. Justice
Hugo Black has been associated with a bad
name, Ku Klux Klan. In these cases some propa-
gandists have tried to make us form judgments
without examining essential evidence and im-
plications. “Al Smith is a Catholic. He must
never be President.” “Roosevelt is a Red. Defeat
his program.” “Hugo Black is or was a Klans-
man. Take him out of the Supreme Court.”

Use of “bad names” without presentation of
their essential meaning, without all their perti-
nent implications, comprises perhaps the most
common of all propaganda devices. Those who
want to maintain the status quo apply bad
names to those who would change it. For ex-
ample, the Hearst press applies bad names to
Communists and Socialists. Those who want to
change the status quo apply bad names to those
who would maintain it. For example, the Daily
Worker and the American Guardian apply bad
names to conservative Republicans and Demo-
crats.

Glittering Generalities

“Glittering Generalities” is a device by which
the propagandist identifies his program with

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

virtue by use of “virtue words.” Here he appeals
to our emotions of love, generosity, and brother-
hood. He uses words like truth, freedom, honor,
liberty, social justice, public service, the right
to work, loyalty, progress, democracy, the Amer-
ican way. Constitution defender. These words
suggest shining ideals. All persons of good will
believe in these ideals. Hence the propagandist,
by identifying his individual group, nation,
race, policy, practice, or belief with such ideals,
seeks to win us to his cause. As Name Calling is
a device to make us form a judgment to reject
and condemn , without examining the evidence,
Glittering Generalities is a device to make us
accept and approve , without examining the
evidence.

For example, use of the phrases, “the right
to work” and “social justice” may be a device to
make us accept programs for meeting the labor-
capital problem which, if we examined them
critically, we would not accept at all.

In the Name Calling and Glittering Gen-
eralities devices, words are used to stir up our
emotions and to befog our thinking. In on£
device “bad words” are used to make us mad;^n
the other “good words” are used to make us^
glad. (See “The Tyranny of Words,” by Stuart
Chase, in Harpers Magazine for November,

*93 70

The propagandist is most effective in use of
these devices when his words make us create
devils to fight or gods to adore. By his use of the
“bad words,” we personify as a “devil” some
nation, race, group, individual, policy, practice,
or ideal; we are made fighting mad to destroy it.
By use of “good words,” we personify as a god-
like idol some nation, race, group, etc. Words
which are “bad” to some are “good” to others^
or may be made so. Thus, to some the New Deal
is “a prophecy of social salvation” while to
others it is “an omen of social disaster.”

From consideration of names, “bad” and
“good,” we pass to institutions and symbols,
also “bad” and “good.” We see these in the next
device.

T ransfer

“Transfer” is a device by which the propa-
gandist carries over the authority, sanction, and
prestige of something we respect and revere to
something he would have us accept. For ex-
ample, most of us respect and revere our church
and our nation. If the propagandist succeeds in
getting church or nation to approve a campaign

in behalf of some program, he thereby transfers
its authority, sanction, and prestige to that pro-
gram. Thus we may accept something which
otherwise we might reject.

In the Transfer device symbols are constantly
used. The cross represents the Christian Church.
The flag represents the nation. Cartoons like
Uncle Sam represent a consensus of public opin-
ion. Those symbols stir emotions. At their very
sight, with the speed of light, is aroused the
whole complex of feelings we have with respect
to church or nation. A cartoonist by having
Uncle Sam disapprove a budget for unemploy-
ment relief would have us feel that the whole
United States disapproves relief costs. By draw-
ing an Uncle Sam who approves the same
budget, the cartoonist would have us feel that
the American people approve it. Thus, the
Transfer device is used both for and against
causes and ideas.

Testimonial

The “Testimonial” is a device to make us
accept anything from a patent medicine or a
cigarette to a program of national policy. In
this device the propagandist makes use of testi-
monials. “When I feel tired, I smoke a Camel
and get the grandest ‘lift/ ” “We believe the
John Lewis plan of labor organization is splen-
did; C. I. O. should be supported.” This device
works in reverse also; counter-testimonials may
be employed. Seldom are these used against
commercial products like patent medicines and
cigarettes, but they are constantly employed in
social, economic, and political issues. “We be-
lieve that the John Lewis plan of labor organi-
zation is bad; C. I. O. should not be supported.”

Plain Folks

“Plain Folks” is a device used by politicians,
labor leaders, business men, and even by minis-
ters and educators to win our confidence by
appearing to be people like ourselves— “just
plain folks among the neighbors.” In election
years especially do candidates show their devo-
tion to little children and the common, homey
things of life. They have front porch campaigns.
For the newspaper men they raid the kitchen
cupboard, finding there some of the good wife’s
apple pie. They go to country picnics; they at-
tend service at the old frame church; they pitch
hay and go fishing; they show their belief in
home and mother. In short, they would win our

HOW TO DETECT PROPAGANDA

votes by showing that they’re just as common as
the rest of us— “just plain folks,’’— and, there-
fore, wise and good. Business men often are
“plain folks” with the factory hands. Even dis-
tillers use the device. “It’s our family’s whiskey,
neighbor; and neighbor, it’s your price.”

Card Stacking

“Card Stacking” is a device in which the
propagandist employs all the arts of deception
to win our support for himself, his group, na-
tion, race, policy, practice, belief or ideal. He
stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-
emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and
evade facts. He resorts to lies, censorship, and
distortion. He omits facts. He offers false testi-
mony. He creates a smoke-screen of clamor by
raising a new issue when he wants an embarrass-
ing matter forgotten. He draws a red herring
across the trail to confuse and divert those in
quest of facts he does not want revealed. He
makes the unreal appear real and the real ap-
pear unreal. He lets half-truth masquerade as
truth. By the Card Stacking device, a mediocre
candidate, through the “build-up,” is made to
appear an intellectual titan; an ordinary prize
fighter a probable world champion; a worthless
patent medicine a beneficent cure. By means of
this device propagandists would convince us
that a ruthless war of aggression is a crusade
for righteousness. Some member nations of the
Non-Intervention Committee send their troops
to intervene in Spain. Card Stacking employs
sham, hypocrisy, effrontery.

The Band Wagon

The “Band Wagon” is a device to make us
follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist’s
program en masse. Here his theme is: “Every-
body’s doing it.” His techniques range from
those of medicine show to dramatic spectacle.
He hires a hall, fills a great stadium, marches a
million men in parade. He employs symbols,
colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts.
He appeals to the desire, common to most of us,
to “follow the crowd.” Because he wants us to
“follow the crowd” in masses, he directs his
appeal to groups held together by common ties
of nationality, religion, race, environment, sex,
vocation. Thus propagandists campaigning for
or against a program will appeal to us as Catho-
lics, Protestants, or Jews; as members of the
Nordic race or as Negroes; as farmers or as

school teachers; as housewives or as miners. All
the artifices of flattery are used to harness the
fears and hatreds, prejudices, and biases, convic-
tions and ideals common to the group; thus
emotion is made to push and pull the group on
to the Band Wagon. In newspaper articles and
in the spoken word this device is also found.
“Don’t throw your vote away. Vote for our
candidate. He’s sure to win.” Nearly every can-
didate wins in every election— before the votes
are in.

Propaganda and Emotion

Observe that in all these devices our emotion
is the stuff with which propagandists work.
Without it they are helpless; with it, harnessing
it to their purposes, they can make us glow with
pride or burn with hatred, they can make us
zealots in behalf of the program they espouse.
As we said in our first letter, propaganda as
generally understood is expression of opinion
or action by individuals or groups with refer-
ence to predetermined ends. Without the ap-
peal to our emotion— to our fears and to our
courage, to our selfishness and unselfishness, to
our loves and to our hates— propagandists would
influence few opinions and few actions.

To say this is not to condemn emotion, an
essential part of life, or to assert that all pre-
determined ends of propagandists are “bad.”
What we mean is that the intelligent citizen
does not want propagandists to utilize his emp-
tions, even to the attainment of “go^cf” ends,
without knowing what is going ottf FI§ (foes not
want to be “used” in the'&ffeinment qf ends he
may later consider “bad.” He does not want to
be gullible. He does not want to be fooled. He
does not want to be duped, even in a “good”
cause. He wants to know the facts and among
these is included the fact of the utilization of
his emotions.;^,

For better understanding of the relationship
between propaganda and emotion see Ch. 1 of
Folkways by William Graham Sumner (Ginn
and Company). This shows why most of us tend
to feel, believe, and act in traditional patterns.
See also Mind in the Making by James Harvey
Robinson (Harper Bros.). This reveals the na-
ture of the mind and suggests how to analyze
propaganda appealing to traditional thought
patterns.

Keeping in mind the seven common propa-
ganda devices, turn to today’s newspapers and
almost immediately you can spot examples of

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

them all. At election time or during any cam-
paign, Plain Folks and Band Wagon are com-
mon. Card Stacking is hardest to detect because
it is adroitly executed or because we lack the
information necessary to nail the lie. A little
practice with the daily newspapers in detecting
these propaganda devices soon enables us to de-
tect them elsewhere— in radio, news-reel, books,
magazines, and in expression of labor unions,
business groups, churches, schools, political
parties.

Our December letter will suggest some propa-
ganda tests and antidotes.

Comment

Much comment followed announcement in
October of the Institute for Propaganda Analy-
sis-some favorable, some unfavorable. Largest

responses came from business men, lawyers,
educators, students, ministers. Many empha-
sized the staggering task we had undertaken,
questioned our ability to perform it. Our reply:
the task is staggering, too difficult for any one
group no matter how hard it tries to be fair,
scientific, objective. We cannot hope to do a
one hundred per cent job. The Institute does
not have all the answers; it lays no claim to in-
fallibility. We don’t propose to tell our sub-
scribers iv hat to think; we aim to help them and
to help ourselves learn how to think. In this
effort we put our faith in the method of analysis.
Using analysis we and our subscribers will make
fewer mistakes, will be fooled less frequently,
will learn better how to see our way through the
confusion of propagandas and counter-propa-
gandas. Over and above, we should have a good
time, because it is “more fun to know ”

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. Cut out a number of advertisements and po-
litical speeches; paste them in a work-book; and
note in the margin the propaganda devices used.

2. Using propaganda devices, make a number of
speeches before the group. Ask the other members
of the group to make notes of the propaganda de-
vices used and to discuss them later.

3. Deliver the same speech, first in a monotone,
then with all the available skill and power of in-
nuendo and feeling. Discuss the different effects on
the listener.

4. Attend a public political speech, and after-
wards ask the speaker the meaning of some of his
w r ords which may have been used, consciously or un-
consciously, as propaganda devices.

5. All the members of the group might attend a
political meeting or listen to the same radio ad-
dress; then compare the interpretation each mem-
ber has of the speech. Consider what factors cause
the differences in interpretation.

6. Get into a discussion over some emotionalized,
controversial subject. Ask a friend to help you catch
yourself using one or more of the seven propaganda
devices.

7. Discuss the propaganda aspects of advertising.
Is there a difference between propaganda advertising
and informative advertising?

8. What are some of the best ways of learning
how to buy more intelligently? Are these methods
taught in schools and colleges? Could they be im-
proved?

9. How can a study of propaganda help us buy
more intelligently?

10. Why do large businesses like a telephone com-
pany or a milk concern, which have a monopoly or a
concession, continue to advertise?

11. Is it possible to use any of the seven propa-
ganda devices in a “right'’ way? For “good” and
“useful” purposes?

Volume 1

DECEMBER, 1937

Number 3

Some ABC’s of Propaganda Analysis

O N NOVEMBER ioth the New York Her-
ald Tribune printed letters from various
readers expressing opinions about the proposed
visit of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to
America.

Intentionally or unintentionally the writers
of these letters used two of the common propa-
ganda devices listed in our November letter:
Name Calling and Glittering Generalities. 1 Nor
are these devices illustrated only in the argu-
ments for and against the Windsors* proposed
visit to America; they may also be observed in
statements and counter-statements about other
items in the recent news; for example, Italy’s
pact with Japan and Germany “to fight Com-
munism” with an implied challenge to the
traditional South American policy of the United
States; the Brussels Conference to end Japan’s
war on China; Hitler’s independent efforts to
mediate in the same war; the special session of
Congress with its arguments for and against
proposed measures dealing with wages and
hours, child labor, crop control, reorganization
of the Federal Government, budget, relief, and
foreign policy.

Not only will subscribers have found the var-
ious propaganda devices illustrated in discus-
sion arising from these events, but they will
have recognized that all the events mentioned
have one thing in common, namely conflict.
The point brings us to some A B C’s of Propa-
ganda Analysis:

First: All propaganda is associated with con-
flict in some form — either as cause, or as effect,
or as both cause and effect.

Second: If we check our own opinions with
respect to conflicts about which we feel strongly
— on which we take sides — we see the direction
of our own propagandas or opinions.

Third: Propaganda which concerns us most
is today's propaganda associated with today's
conflicts. It affects our incomes, our businesses,
our working conditions, our health, our educa-

1 These devices, it will be remembered, are: Name Call-
ing, Glittering Generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain
Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon.

tion, our rights and responsibilities in fields
political, economic, social, and religious.

Fourth: Our own opinions, even with respect
to today’s propagandas, have been largely de-
termined for us by inheritance and environ-
ment. We are born white or black, Jewish or
Gentile, Catholic or Protestant, rich or poor.
We have been reared in urban or rural com-
munities, North or South, East or West. Our
parents have been devout believers, ardent free-
thinkers, or indifferent to religious doctrine.
Our beliefs and actions mirror the conditioning
influences of home and neighborhood, church
and school, vocation and political party. We
resemble those whose inheritance and environ-
ment are similar to ours; we are bound to them
by ties of common experience. We tend to re-
spond favorably to their opinions and propa-
gandas because they are “our kind of people.”
We tend to distrust the opinions of those who
differ from us in inheritance and environment.
Only drastic changes in our life conditions,
with new and different experiences, associa-
tions, and influences can offset or cancel out the
effect of inheritance and long years of environ-
ment.

Fifth: A fundamental step in propaganda
analysis, therefore, is to analyze ourselves, to
make clear why we act and believe as we do
with respect to various conflicts and issues —
political, economic, social, and religious. Do
we believe and act as we do because we are Jews,
Protestants, Catholics; because our fathers were
strong Republicans or lifelong Democrats; be-
cause our parents were Methodists or Seventh
Day Adventists; because our fathers belonged
to labor unions; because our fathers were em-
ployers who fought labor unions?

Sixth: The most effective way to deal with
propaganda, once we recognize it, is to suspetid
our judgment until we obtain essential facts
and implications involved in the propaganda .
We must ask: Who is the propagandist? Is he
consciously and intentionally trying to influ-
ence our thoughts and actions? For what pur-
pose does he use the common propaganda
devices? How does he use words and symbols?

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

What are their exact meanings? What do they
mean to the propagandist? What do they mean
to us? What are the propagandist’s interests?
Do his interests coincide with the interests of
most citizens?

Seventh: The fact that some words are omni-
bus words makes many the easy dupes of propa-
gandists. Omnibus words are words extraor-
dinarily difficult to define. They carry all
meanings to all men. Therefore, the best test
for the factual content of propaganda lies in
specific, concrete definition of the words and
symbols used by the propagandist. Moreover,
sharp definition is the best antidote against
words and symbols carrying a high charge of
emotion. Such a test is discussed in “As I View
the Thing,” a column by Sam Tucker in the
Decatur Herald, Decatur, Illinois, October 29,
1937, fr° m which the following extracts are
quoted: 2

“ORATORY IS THE ART of making pleas-
ant sounds, which cause the hearers to say ‘Yes,
Yes’ in sympathy with the performer, without
inquiring too closely exactly what he means.
Nearly all so-called political debate is oratory,
by this unflattering definition. So also, I am
compelled to admit, are nearly all newspaper
editorials, most of the lectures on economics,
and most sermons.

“Let us, just as a laboratory experiment, and
not for any practical purpose — far less, for any
purpose of discrediting the speakers — examine
two typical paragraphs, from two recent politi-
cal speeches. . . .

specimen no. 1

“Liberty and freedom should mean a fair distri-
bution of the rewards of production and should
prevent an unhealthy concentration of wealth and
economic power in individual hands or government.

SPECIMEN NO. 2

“True liberalism does not start as an economic
system. An economic system flows from it. The only
economic system which will not destroy intellectual
and spiritual freedom is private enterprise, regu-
lated to prevent special privilege or coercion.

“The first word is ‘liberty.’ Tell me, please,
exactly what liberty is. Where does it begin,
and where does it leave off? And while you are
working at this problem, notice please the sec-
ond noun in the sentence: ‘freedom.’ Presum-

2 As this letter goes to press, the staff of the Institute does
not know whose oratory Mr. Tucker is quoting.

ably it means something different from ‘liberty,’
because our great political leader would not
have considered it necessary to couple the two
if they meant the same thing. . . .

“After you have worked out these definitions,
I invite you to look back again at the two quo-
tations from the Great Minds. There are a lot
of further questions I have for you. What is a
‘fair distribution’? Does it mean the same thing
to you as to your housemaid, your hired man,
or die machine operator in your factory? What
are the ‘rewards of production’? Again, I want
you to be definite, not furry. How much con-
centration of wealth is an ‘unhealthy’ concen-
tration? What is ‘government’? If you think
that last is easy, I will undertake to give you a
bad half-hour in conversation.

“In the Specimen No. 2, following the same
stern effort to get at some real kernel of mean-
ing, under rank flowering jungle of verbiage, I
want to know your definition of ‘liberalism,’
and of ‘economic system.’ I invite you to set
down in specific terms on paper, in firm, solid
terms a plain man can understand, what dis-
tinction you make between ‘intellectual and
spiritual freedom,’ as the words are used by the
speaker. Tell me what, exactly, is ‘private enter-
prise.’ Does a man who runs a tavern, selling
liquor to minors, operate a ‘private enterprise’?

“Perhaps you will be able to do better with
all these problems than I can. Sincerely I hope
so. For the fact is, that after earnest study of
these sonorous examples of oratory, substitut-
ing the word ‘blah’ for every well-sounding
word I cannot turn into a firm meaning, I get
this translation of two famous speeches:

NO. 1

“Blah and Blah should mean a Blah-blah of the
blah of blah, and should prevent an blahy blah of
blah and blah power in individual hands or blah.

NO. 2

“True blah does not start as a blah blah. A blah
blah flows from it. The only blah blah which will
not destroy blah and blah blah is blah-blah, regu-
lated to pfevent blah-blah or blah.

“If either speech contains any more precise
meaning than that, you’ll have to prove it, and
then you’ll have to prove that the meaning you
read into it carried into the intelligence of any-
body else, beside yourself.”

While Mr. Tucker gives his points humorous

SOME ABCS OF PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

1 1

emphasis characterized by what some readers
would call hyperbole, his tests and antidotes
none the less will be recognized by our subscrib-
ers as having particular application to the prop-
aganda devices of Name Calling, Glittering
Generalities, and Transfer . 8 The process ap-
plies, however, to all the seven common propa-
ganda devices. Not only must we define the
meanings of words, phrases, slogans, and sym-
bols, but we must check the facts and alleged
facts, as well as omission of facts and distortion
of facts found in Card Stacking. Especially
must we be critical of our own emotions and
feelings when we recognize the Plain Folks and
Band Wagon devices. It may be that the propa-
gandist gives us all essential facts and implica-
tions; it may be that he makes his words specify
clearly things which mean the same thing to
persons of widely varying characteristics and
environment. That is something for our analy-
sis to determine.Crhe analysis must include
ourselves, the propagandist, and the words,
symbols, facts, and alleged facts with which the
propagandist deals. The process is not easy. It
is made easier by readings suggested^frFbfiir
November letter: Chapter One of Folkways by
William Graham Sumner, and The Mind in
the Making by James Harvey Robinson.

Professors Sumner and Robinson show why
we act and believe as we do, why we react to
propaganda, why the common propaganda de-
vices are effective unless checked by our critical
thinking. They reveal basic principles of prop-
aganda analysis. For example, out of a back-
ground of anthropology and history they show:

First: We are creatures of custom, habit, tra-
dition, folkways. “Custom regulates the whole
of man’s actions.” We cling to the example of
our predecessors; hence the effectiveness of the
propagandist’s appeal to traditional ways of
believing and acting.

Second: Groups having much in common by
reason of inheritance and environment (Sum-
ner’s “we-groups”) think their own ways of
acting and believing the only “right ways.”
They praise their own folkways (Glittering
Generalities, Transfer, Plain Folks, Band
Wagon) and apply bad names and symbols to
the ways of others (Name Calling, Transfer).

Disagreement with a we-group's accepted

ways of acting and thinking is heresy, an evil
to be condemned and punished. Most propa-
gandas are associated with conflicts arising from
dissent from accepted ways of acting and believ-
ing in spheres political, economic, social, and
religious.

Third: Many accepted ways and beliefs take
on a glamour of sentiment or pathos, a large
emotional element which makes them appear
impregnable to examination and criticism. Ex-
amples: mother-love, homeland, democracy,
patriotism. Some propagandists take advantage
of this as may be seen, for instance, in Mother’s
Day and the commercial uses to which it is put.

Fourth : Language is largely an emotional
outlet, as we observe in Name Calling and
Glittering Generalities, “corresponding to var-
ious cooings, growlings, snarls, crowings, and
bravings.” Test your newspaper columnists for
bad names and for such “snarls, brayings, coo-
ings,” and Glittering Generalities. Are these
used by Westbrook Pegler, Hugh S. Johnson,
Dorothy Thompson, Walter Lippmann, Hey-
wood Broun, Paul B. Mallon, Walter Winchell,
and O. O. McIntyre?

Fifth: The best way to deal with propaganda
whether it be expressed in action, symbols, or
words is to criticize and analyze it. Analysis
aids in explaining our responses to propaganda
devices; it reveals the strategy of the propa-
gandist. It is at once a test and an antidote. It
operates immediately to make us suspend judg-
ment until we can form a judgment on a
broader basis of facts. Thus it is a test which
materially aids in showing whether or not a
particular propaganda conforms to or is antag-
onistic to the specific freedoms and responsi-
bilities listed or suggested in our October letter.
If we accept them as a standard for measure-
ment, analysis is an antidote to protect us
against propagandas antagonistic to them.

To sum up, the citizen who questions and
challenges propaganda will deal with it bv
analysis. He knows that words and symbols
often are intoxicants, to make us mad or glad,
to put us in a towering rage or a rosy glow. He
will subject omnibus words to sharp definition.
He will ask: “What do these words and symbols
mean? What do they mean to the propagan-
dist? What would the propagandist have them

3 See also: Stuart Chase, “The Tyranny of Words,” Har-
pers Magazine , November, 1937; Kenneth Burke, “Read-
ing While You Run,” The New Republic, November.

1937; Arthur Schopenhauer, Essay on the Art of Contro-
versy; Thurman W. Arnold. The Symbols of Government
and The Folklore of Capitalism.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

mean to me? Who is the propagandist? What
are his purposes and his interests? Do his inter-
ests correspond with my interests? Do they cor-
respond with the interests of most citizens?”
The intelligent citizen will not do something
because “everybody’s doing it” (Band Wagon).
He will be aware of the tendency on the part of
participants in a crowd to let their enthusiasm
run away with their judgment. Professor Sum-
ner says that the educated man, “if he is wise,
just when a crowd is filled with enthusiasms
and emotion, will leave it . . . and form his own
judgment.”

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. Let two members of the group deliver almost
the same speech. One should use forceful generaliza-
tions, with emphasis on appeal to feelings. The
other should emphasize accuracy and facts, with ap-
peal to thought. Discuss comparative values of these
two types of speeches.

2. Arrange for the group to attend a public meet-
ing or to listen to the same radio address. Assign to
some members of the group the responsibility of
systematically noting all the “blah” words used (the
vague, indefinite words appealing to feelings). Dis-
cuss these words in the group. Examine their mean-
ings.

3. Make a “Blah” Dictionary based on the group’s
discussion of the meanings of the words studied in
Question 2 and of other words submitted by the
group. Such words as the following might be in-
cluded: “communist,” “red,” “queer,” “American-
ism,” “racket,” “revolutionary,” “fascist,” “economic
royalist,” “tory,” “conservative,” “reactionary,”
“dealers in death,” etc. Distribute copies of this Dic-
tionary before attending the next big political

Comment

Many readers have asked for a list of books
on propaganda. We prefer to recommend only
a book or two at a time. A basic book is Propa-
ganda by Leonard W. Doob (Henry Holt and
Co., New York, 417 pages, $3.60). Among other
aspects of propaganda Professor Doob describes
its relationship to conflict, emotion, suggesti-
bility. He stresses the importance of analyzing
today’s propaganda, describes Communist and
Nazi propaganda. Much of it is clear, easy read-
ing; for the average reader, its technical classifi-
cations may be skipped without great loss.

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

speech. Does an understanding of these and similar
words help you evaluate propaganda?

4. Listen to speeches representing different shades
of opinion on political, social, and economic issues.
After each speech write down the dogmas which the
speaker assumed and which the audience appeared
to accept. Discuss these dogmas critically.

5. Discuss the following questions: What are ef-
fective means of counteracting some of the harmful
effects of modern propaganda? What factors de-
termine an individual’s receptivity to propaganda?

6. Examine your own interests and activities. Do
organizations with which you are associated use
propaganda in order to secure trade, votes, subscrip-
tions, etc.? Are their statements misleading? Who
is responsible for such statements? As a member of
the group are you responsible?

7. How much does misleading propaganda de-
stroy confidence? Confidence in what? In whom?
What purpose does this sort of confidence serve?
Are people in small communities more susceptible
to propaganda than residents of large cities?

Volume 1 JANUARY, 1938 Number 4

How to Analyze Newspapers'

F ROM time to time these letters will deal
with channels of communication. This let-
ter suggests some points for us to keep in mind
in analyzing newspapers. For those who would
understand how propaganda operates with
reference to today’s issues, the newspaper has
special significance. Every day it brings us in
1 This is the first of two letters on analyzing newspapers.

printed form examples of propaganda which
we can read, clip, and study at our convenience.

One should remember that propaganda is
always associated with conflict— as cause, as ef-
fect, or as cause and effect; In this respect propa-
ganda has something in common with news. So
close is the association that it may properly be
said that news is usually the story of some con-

HOW TO ANALYZE NEWSPAPERS

fiict. The age-long battle of men against the im-
personal forces of nature— fire, flood, drought,
heat, and cold— gives us recurringly many ex-
citing conflicts which become news. The strug-
gle of men to learn the secrets of natural forces
and to harness them to the purposes of men is
itself a conflict, waged through the centuries.
Out of this conflict— mankind’s battle for in-
creased knowledge— have come the stories, the
news of scientific achievements in many related
fields.

Observed much more frequently in the news,
however, are the conflicts of men with men and
groups of men with other groups of men. A rob-
ber attacks an honest citizen. The police cap-
ture the robber. The prisoner is tried— conflict
between prosecution and defense. Or a group
of men, a labor union, disputes with an em-
ployer or a group of employers over wages and
working conditions. These and other groups
bring conflicting pressures on governmental
bodies to make laws or to use police power to
help accomplish some desired ends. If there are
sharp differences of opinion about the ends
sought or about methods used to attain these
ends, there are additional conflicts which may
illustrate many or all of the common propa-
gandas we find associated with stresses and
pressures involving government, business, and
labor.

Two Main Purposes

Every American newspaper, unless its ex-
penses are paid by some individual or group
for the attainment of some special end, must
have two main purposes. First , it must show a
profit. In this it is like the corner drug store.
Second , in order to make money , it must print
news which attracts and holds readers. In most
cases a newspaper’s main source of income is
advertising. Ordinarily, it can obtain advertis-
ing at profitable rates only when it has enough
readers to make the advertising profitable to
the enterprises which pay for it.

What kinds of news and conflicts attract
readers? That depends on the readers. The
more intelligent readers of wide interests are at-
tracted and held by the kinds of basic conflicts
featured in the news of such papers as The New
York Times , The New York Herald Tribune,
The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science
Monitor, The Springfield Republican, The St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, The St. Louis Star Times,
The Des Moines Register, The Kansas City

Star. (America has some of the best newspapers
in the world; the above named papers are
widely rated among the best.) A number of the
conflicts featured by these newspapers, like
propagandas which concern us most, have some
significant bearing on matters of large social
consequence: our incomes, our working condi-
tions, our health, our education, our civil free-
doms, and our responsibilities.

Even the best available newspapers print
much news not because it has any significant
bearing on our everyday problems, but simply
because it is entertaining. Under the head of
entertainment come the comic strips, the soci-
ety columns, and much of the news involving
crime, vice, and sex. Most of this entertainment
news has little bearing on matters of large social
significance although some of it does unques-
tionably affect popular standards of behavior
and thought, which are areas important to ana-
lysts of propaganda. A sensational murder or
sex crime might be emphasized in a manner to
divert attention deliberately from the basic
sources of such crimes or from deeper, more
general, social disorders.

Freedom of the Press

Especially important are the propagandas
and news items growing out of the conflicts
which affect our every day problems.

Under a democratic government the decisions
which we make as business men, labor unionists,
teachers, or clergymen, or the decisions we make
as voters, are for the most part decisions affect-
ing our various democratic freedoms and re-
sponsibilities. Unless we possess the essential
facts and implications of the issues which we
must decide, our decisions are perforce based
upon misinformation, lack of information,
guess-work, or emotion, and hence may be con-
trary to our own interests. Most of us must relv
on the newspapers for virtually all information
bearing on these issues or conflicts.

Do local, state, or federal governmental of-
ficials create legislative or executive censorship,
direct or indirect, to prevent the press from
printing essential facts and implications? Does
the apathy or lack of interest of readers in these
matters make it unprofitable for newspapers to
emphasize this more important news? Finally,
do publishers, editors, or reporters themselves
“take sides” on these issues, and in consequence
cause the news to be so written or so edited as to
omit or distort some essential facts and implica-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

tions? In brief, are newspapers themselves some-
times so operated as to limit the freedom of
newspaper readers to obtain essential facts and
implications of conflicts affecting their welfare?
Insofar as a newspaper is thus conducted it be-
comes itself a medium for specific propagandas
and opinions.

In a recently published study of the Wash-
ington press corps made under the auspices of
the Social Science Research Council ( The Wash-
ington Correspondents , Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1937, 436 pp., $3.00) Leo C. Rosten
discovered through the circulation of several
anonymous questionnaires that 60.5 per cent
of this top-ranking, relatively high-salaried
group of 1 27 men believe that the press devotes
too much space to scandals and sensations while
29.8 per cent believe the contrary and 9.6 per
cent are uncertain; that 48.5 per cent believe
the news columns are not equally fair to capital /
and to labor while 43.8 per cent believe that
they are equally fair and 7.6 per cent are uncer-j
tain; that 86.6 per cent believe, however, that
newspapers do not give significant accounts of \
basic economic conflicts while only 1 1 .4 per cent
believe they do and only 1.9 per cent are uncer-
tain; that 63.8 per cent believe the publishers*
cry of “Freedom of the Press’* in fighting against
the NRA code was a ruse while 24.7 per cent
accept the cry at face value and 11.4 per cent
are uncertain; that 46.2 per cent believe “most
papers printed unfair or distorted stories about
the Tugwell Pure Foods Bill** while only 21.6
per cent held that the news accounts were fair
and the large bloc of 32 per cent was uncertain;
that 60 per cent agreed that “It is almost im-
possible to be objective. You read your paper,
notice its editorials, get praised for some stories
and criticized for others. You 'sense policy* and
are psychologicallv driven to slant your stories
accordingly,*’ while only 34.2 per cent disagreed
with this and only 5.6 per cent were uncertain;
that 55.5 per cent testified thev had seen their
writings “played down, cut or killed for 'policy*
reasons,’’ while 41.6 per cent held to the con-
trary and 2.7 per cent were uncertain: that 60.8
per cent held that the correspondents in Wash-
ington try to please their editors and 28.3 per
cent disagreed; and that 60.6 per cent testified
they wrote stories to fit the editorial preconcep-
tions of their employer and only 34.8 per cent
testified to the contrary.

A number of individual correspondents told
Mr. Rosten (who was guided in his searching

inquiry by Professor Charles E. Merriam, chair-
man of the political science department of the
University of Chicago, Professor Harold D.
Lasswell, of the University of Chicago, Pro-
fessor Leonard D. White, and Dr. Charles
Ascher) that publishers had brought pressure
to bear upon them in various ways to produce a
certain news “slant.” Mr. Rosten says, “News-
papermen become expert in estimating the
pleasure with which their home offices will wel-
come stories with a particular political empha-
sis or with particular political implications.”

It would be strange indeed if publishers, edi-
tors, and reporters, as individuals or as groups
and associations, were not affected by emotions,
prejudices, and biases irrespective of whether
called by these names or designated as convic
tions, principles, or ideals. Like the rest of us
'they are profoundly influenced by their own
inheritance and environment. They may “take
sides” because they are led to do so by their own
convictions or biases, or because of pressure ap-
plied by readers and advertisers. In this respect
they are more or less like business men, teachers,
clergymen, and people in general. We believe,
however, that they are less like them; that their
very trade or vocation, involving as it does daily
concern with the scores of conflicts out of which
news flows, makes them tend to become less
prejudiced, less biased, more skeptical, and
more objective with respect to current conflicts
than are most citizens.

The Canons of Journalism

In order to find “some means of codifying
sound practice and just aspirations of American
journalism,” The Canons of Journalism, ethical
rules of the profession, were adopted by the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, April
28, 1923, and have since been endorsed by many
state associations and other groups of journal-
ists. One will find in these canons a yardstick to
apply to the newspapers they read, a method of
determining whether or not these papers are
biased in their presentation of news. As printed
in Editor and Publisher , January 30, 1937, the
canons are:

(1) RESPONSIBILITY— The right of a newspa-
per to attract and hold readers is restricted by noth-
ing but considerations of public welfare. The use a
newspaper makes of the share of public attention it
gains, serves to determine its sense of responsibility,
which it shares with every member of its staff. A

HOW TO ANALYZE NEWSPAPERS

journalist who uses his power for any selfish or other-
wise unworthy purpose is faithless to a high trust.

(2) FREEDOM OF THE PRESS-Freedom of
the press is to be guarded as a vital right of mankind.
It is the unquestionable right by law, including the
wisdom of any restrictive statute. To its privileges
under the freedom of American institutions are in-
separably joined its responsibilities for an intelligent
fidelity to the Constitution of the United States.

(3) INDEPENDENCE-Freedom from all obliga-
tions except that of fidelity to the public interest is
vital.

A. Promotion of any private interest contrary to
the general welfare, for whatever reason, is not
compatible with honest journalism. So-called news
communications from private sources should not be
published without public notice of their source or
else substantiation of the claims to value as news,
both in form and substance.

B. Partisanship in editorial comment which
knowingly departs from the truth does violence to
the best spirit of American journalism; in the news
columns it is subversive of a fundamental principle
of the profession.

(4) SINCERITY, TRUTHFULNESS, ACCU-
RACY— Good faith with the reader is the foundation
of all journalism worthy of the name.

A. By every consideration of good faith, a news-
paper is constrained to be truthful. It is not to be
excused for lack of thoroughness, or accuracy within
its control, or failure to obtain command of these
essential qualities.

B. Headlines should be fully warranted by the
contents of the articles which they surmount.

(5) IMPARTIALITY — Sound practice makes
clear distinction between news reports and expres-
sions of opinion. News reports should be free from
opinion or bias of any kind. This rule does not apply
to so-called special articles unmistakably devoted to
advocacy or characterized by a signature authorizing
the writer’s own conclusions and interpretations.

(6) FAIR PLAY— A newspaper should not pub-
lish unofficial charges affecting reputation or moral
character, without opportunity given to the accused
to be heard; right practice demands the giving of
such opportunity in all cases of serious accusation
outside judicial proceedings.

A. A newspaper should not invade rights of pri-
vate feelings without sure warrant of public rights
as distinguished from public curiosity.

B. It is the privilege, as it is the duty, of a news-
paper to make prompt and complete correction of
its own serious mistakes of fact or opinion, whatever
their origin.

(7) DECENCY— A newspaper cannot escape con-
viction of insincerity if, while professing high moral
purpose, it supplies incentives to base conduct, such
as are to be found in details of crime and vice, pub-
lication of which is not demonstrably for the public
good. Lacking authority to enforce its canons, the
journalism here represented can but express the
hope that deliberate pandering to vicious instincts
will encounter effective public disapproval or yield
to the influence of a preponderant professional con-
demnation.

Concerning any newspaper, therefore, our
subscribers may ask questions based on these
canons, such questions as: Is it published in
accord with the canons of The American Society
of Newspaper Editors? Does it attract and hold
readers by "nothing but considerations of pub-
lic welfare"? Is it using its freedom to omit or
to distort essential facts relating to conflicts and
issues before the community or the nation? Of
what does “fidelity to the public interest" con-
sist? When does any private interest become
contrary to the general welfare? How are the
seven propaganda devices used in news articles,
headlines, editorials, and cartoons? (It should
be remembered, however, that the use of the
propaganda devices is not in itself an evil if
they are used in accordance with the canons of
journalism and if the opinions or propagandas
they carry are scrutinized and analyzed by the
newspaper readers.)

Suggestions

If possible, read more than one local news-
paper. For purposes of analysis of most propa-
ganda. much news growing out of conflicts of
little social significance need not be read. In ad-
dition to local papers read a newspaper which
prints many more facts and implications arising
from conflicts of national and world signifi-
cance than most local papers can print. (Some
of these papers were listed above.) For back-
ground reading we suggest: The Daily News-
paper in America , by Alfred McClung Lee fThe
MacMillan Co., New York, 797 pp., S3. 50). Pub-
lished in 1937, it includes discussion of the cur-
rent labor-employer conflict between the Amer-
ican Newspaper Publishers Association and the
American Newspaper Guild. For news growing
out of this conflict, and for other significant
facts about newspapers as business enterprises
read Editor and Publisher and The Guild Re-
porter. The November 1937 issue of Building
America is devoted to the American press.

Volume I

FEBRUARY, 1938

Number 5

Newspaper Analysis'

N EWSPAPERS in any nation mirror the
political, economic, social, and religious
freedoms and responsibilities, or lack of them,
in that nation. In general, there are two types
of government, two types of economic systems,
two types of theological systems, two types of
social groups. On the one hand, there is the
authoritarian type. In this, authority flows from
the top down and obedience goes from the bot-
tom up. On the other hand, there is the demo-
cratic type. In this, in theory and in practice
insofar as the organization is actually demo-
cratic, authority flows from all members of the
group, and obedience as well as authority flows
from democratically chosen representatives to
the group. Under the democratic theory, offi-
cials of a government, church, or any other
organization are responsible to the people com-
prising the group.

In authoritarian states a single will domi-
nates. For that reason there is but one voice
permitted, the voice of the dictator or dicta-
torial group. Other voices are not heard. There
is but one opinion, hence but one propaganda;
school, radio, cinema, theater, labor and busi-
ness groups, and newspapers must repeat or
mirror that propaganda.

In democratic states there are many wills;
hence many voices, many opinions, many propa-
gandas. If the many wills, voices, opinions, and
propagandas were to be overtly suppressed in
such a state then it would cease being a demo-
cratic state and would become an authoritarian
state. This, for example, has happened in Italy
and Germany, which once had free channels for
the communication of information, opinion,
and propaganda. In Russia the channels of com-
munication have seldom if ever been open ex-
cept to one group. During the World War, in
the United States, in England, and in France,
the authoritarian method of government was
employed and only one general mode of propa-
ganda was permitted.

In the authoritarian state the propaganda
problem is simple; the authority at the top sim-
ply suppresses all propagandas but its own.

1 This is the second of two letters on analyzing newspapers.

Concentration camps, imprisonment, and even
death are used to prevent other propagandas.

Democracy and Propaganda

In democratic states, such as the United States,
there are many propagandas; properly so, if one
prefers the democratic to the authoritarian state.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, as
a Springfield Republican editorial (September
3, 1937) has pointed out, “necessarily afford full
scope for propaganda from everybody, every-
where, any time.”

“Free propaganda/’ The Springfield Repub-
lican added, “is nothing but free publicity for
the views, interpretations, arguments, pleadings,
truths and untruths, half-lies and lies of all crea-
tion. Propaganda is good as well as bad. ‘We
are surrounded by clouds of propaganda.’ . . .

It is up to each of us to precipitate from those
clouds the true and the false, the near-true and
the near-false, identifying and giving to each
classification its correct label. If this task is far
beyond the facilities or ability of most of us, the
fact has to be accepted as the price we pay for
liberty/’ \

“Yet the freest press in the world," the edi-
torial continued, “abuses its privileges shame-
fully. The deliberate misrepresentation and dis-
tortion of truth all the time going on for the
promotion of some interest, political, financial,
social or patriotic, is staggering."

\jnder the democratic system, as The New
York Times (September 1, 1937) suggested edi-
torially, truth and falsehood fight it out in a
free and open field. “What is truly vicious,"
continued The Times, “is not propaganda but
a monopoly of it."

Pressures on the Press

Full scope for propaganda from everybody,
everywhere, any time, is not possible if news-
papers exclude from their columns some opin-
ions and propagandas while giving space to
others. When this happens one side or the other
tends to have the monopoly of propaganda
which The New York Times holds to be “truly

NEWSPAPER ANALYSIS

vicious/’ Then we see the violation of signifi-
cant portions of the Canons of Journalism of
the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
(See January issue of Propaganda Analysis.)

It is frequently asserted that newspaper ar-
ticles and editorials often are determined by
pressure of advertisers and readers. On this
point Professor Roscoe Ellard of the School of
Journalism, University of Missouri, has pre-
pared for the Institute of Propaganda Analysis
the following statement:

“Newspapers have learned that it is a rare
business man who is business-like enough to
buy space he knows will profit him in a paper
that has seriously angered him by editorial poli-
cies or news. He will buy advertising less ad-
vantageously in order to punish an editor, per-
haps to put that editor out of business.

“A point to understand is that it requires
adequate power— financial power— for a news-
paper to fight a persistent predatory anger
which truthful, public-spirited editing may have
aroused, either among large advertisers or or-
ganized groups of readers. Newspaper invest-
ments are huge; operating expenses high; news-
papers must publish regularly whether the
advertising for each issue is profitable or not.
Newspapers need both advertising revenue and
constant readers in order to exist.

“A newspaper can offend one or two adver-
tisers—// it has many . It can attack a utility. But
if it loses any significant proportion of its con-
stant readers, it loses the indispensable service
it must sell to the advertiser. Yet it is not the
reader who pays for news and comment: the
advertiser pays. 2 Journalism, therefore, must
weigh each pressure for suppression or support
in terms of the newspaper’s very existence. Each
editor must ask, ‘Are we strong enough to with-
stand this particular pressure? It is apt to cost
us $ 10,000 or 1 1 ,000,000—5,000 readers or 50,000
readers/ The problem is not as simple as many
critics assume.

“Unless the pressure is unusually strong, the
metropolitan daily can abruptly resist — and
usually does resist— an economic attempt to
coerce. The smaller paper cannot, for the
smaller paper needs nearly every advertiser on
its books, and nearly every reader on its list in
order to pay a sufficiently reasonable dividend

2 Our comment: Some authorities hold that in the long
run the reader does pay for advertising, that its cost must
be added to the price of the products or services adver-
tised.

to keep its stockholders from withdrawing their
money.

“The principal reasons why very strong pa-
pers resort at times to propaganda or submit to
pressures are two, both psychological, rather
than immediately economic. One is the quite
sincere class consciousness of either the pub-
lisher or stockholders; the other an apathy on
the part of readers toward important issues over
which they cannot get excited, or which they
cannot understand.

“A class-conscious publisher, for instance,
lives on a suburban gold coast, belongs to the
countrv club, eats lunch with a banker and an
industrialist. This publisher as a young man
mav have possessed an unprejudiced point of
view with plenty of courage to act upon it.
Graduallv his environment changes his sincere
attitudes. Finally he hates to have anything in
his paper that seems out of place among ‘the
best people/ He begins euphemistically and
quite honestly to describe as ‘in bad taste* the
publication of facts or opinions which support
an economic or a political philosophy with
which his associates do not agree.

“For instance, from a famous historic city,
full of tradition and strong social prejudice, a
newspaperman writes me this:

“We can laugh at the Townsendites, tell the Le-
gion to mind its own business, inform the politicians
that they can run the government, but that we*ll run
the newspaper— that is, we can tell those people
that in their positions as members of the various
pressure groups. But their pressure is nevertheless
powerful on the ground of our social contact with
them and our personal friendship. What we can tell
the Townsendite as a Townsendite or the industrial
proprietor as a capitalist, we cannot tell the same
men as fellow committeemen at the country club, or
as the men whose wives gossip with our wives on a
trip to Bermuda.

“A newspaperman is only human, and the best of
us dislike to have enemies in our intimate social con-
tacts, even though we know we are right. A straight
presentation of the news according to the best jour-
nalistic standards may offend John Doe whose resi-
dential grounds touch ours and whose daughter is
engaged to our nephew. So we rationalize that may-
be John is right as far as he goes— and then we com-
promise. God unwilling, and human nature being
what it is, we can do no other.”

“The fact that reader anathv can also stifle
important facts and comment is illustrated by
this incident:

“Paper X in a middle western city cam-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

paigned for the city manager form of govern-
ment following an admitted fiasco of inactivity,
inefficiency, and political maneuvering with
municipal utility funds. Facts and comment in
this campaign produced widespread approval
over coffee cups at luncheon clubs, dinner par-
ties, and club house tables. But specific proce-
dures of changing the city charter, complexities
of city management and the somewhat labo-
rious organization to effect the reform, were
obscure, uninteresting, too much trouble.

“No one moved to do anything except talk;
readers tired of news and comment about it.
The campaign fell of its own weight. Few edi-
tors will print columns when they discover that
practically no one is reading them.

“Two hitherto unpublished cases of advertis-
ing and organized reader pressure follow:

“Metropolitan paper Y published a series of
stories on sweat shop conditions in a factory
which had branches in other parts of the coun-
try. The stories were all substantiated by per-
sonal investigation of an experienced reporter
and by personal interviews with girls employed
in the factory. The factory and various of its
branches brought considerable pressure by
threats to withdraw its own advertising and to
secure the withdrawal of national advertising.
Following this— whether because of it no one
can say— the same paper published a series of
illustrated stories on ideal working conditions
in the same factory.

“The editor of a small but old and profitable
daily writes me this: ‘Pressure constantly is
brought to bear upon us, though often it comes
more from our advance knowledge of what a
certain group’s attitude will be on a particular
subject than from pressure exerted after publi-
cation. For instance, veterans probably hold as
strong a threat over small town newspapers as
any other group: vet they seldom actually bring
pressure to bear after a specific publication.
Policies on my paper, and I think on many
others with no greater resources than ours, are
adopted or modified in advance in an effort to
escape later pressure. The “strong sentiments”
of other local groups are generally known, and,

consciously or unconsciously, many small dailies
tread on as few toes as possible without seriously
losing character and self-respect.’

“Many cases exist, of course, of valiant and
expensive defeats of pressure attempts. My ex-
perience is that the vast majority of editors
invariably reject what they recognize to be
attempts to coerce them when the issue is im-
portant, and when refusal to submit is not
almost certain to bankrupt them. The problem
is very seldom one of bribery; it is one of the
wish to continue in business.” 8

The Most Reliable Newspapers

The Washington newspaper correspondents,
obviously well-informed in this field, replying
anonymously to a questionnaire by Mr. Leo C.
Rosten and cited in his book, The Washington
Correspondents (Harcourt, Brace and Com-
pany, New York, 1937), found the following in
respective order the most reliable newspapers
in the United States: The New York Times,
The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science
Monitor, the Scripps-Howard papers, The St,
Louis Post-Dispatch, The Washington Star,
The New York Herald-Tribune, The Washing-
ton Post, The Philadelphia Record, and The
Kansas City Star. The least reliable in the order
given were reported to be: the Hearst news-
papers, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles
Times , the Scripps-Howard papers, The Den-
ver Post, The New York Herald-Tribune, The
Washington Post , The Philadelphia Record,
The Daily Worker, and The Philadelphia In-
quirer.

It will be observed that the Washington press
corps is divided as to whether certain news-
papers should be classified as “most reliable”
or “least reliable.” It should also be observed
that certain newspapers appear exclusively in
one category or the other. The first two news-
paper organizations in each group were the
overwhelming choices of the corps, so that we
have The New York Times balanced as “most
fair and reliable” against the Hearst newspapers
as “least fair and reliable”; The Baltimore Sun
balanced against The Chicago Tribune.

■For additional citations of effects of pressure on news-
papers, see articles by Professor Roscoe Ellard in Editor
and Publisher, April 10, 1937, in Education Against Pro-
paganda , Seventh Yearbook of the National Council for
the Social Studies. 1937, and in The Quill , June, 1937.
See also: The Washington Correspondents by Leo C.
Rosten; Freedom of the Press by George Seldes. Sug-

gested reading for 1938: Editor and Publisher, Room
1700, Times Square Building, New York City (regular
subscription S4.00, educational rate S2.00 a year) and
The Guild Reporter , 1560 Broadway, New York City
(regular subscription $3.50, educational and library rate
$1.75 a year). y

The Press and Political Leadership'

By IRVING BRANT

HpHE greatest shock ever experienced by the
-L newspaper publishers of America was to
wake up on the morning of November 4, 1936,
and discover that they had no influence in a
presidential election. For many years the Ameri-
can press has been ruled by economic forces
whose inevitable effect is to destroy the capacity
of the press for leadership. But so little is this
understood by most publishers that they still re-
gard it as mere popular perversity that the met-
ropolitan newspapers were overwhelmingly for
one candidate for President, and the people
were overwhelmingly for another.

Since the 1936 election, the efforts of the press
have been devoted to two other matters of polit-
ical importance. Almost unanimously they com-
bated President Roosevelt’s plan to reorganize
the Supreme Court, and with equal unanimity
they engaged in a campaign to discredit Justice
Hugo L. Black and compel him to resign from
the position to which the President appointed
him.

The newspapers take full credit for the de-
feat of the court plan. They presented the news
about it fairly, debated it vigorously, and I
think they exerted an important local pressure
upon individual senators and congressmen. But
the Gallup poll shows conclusively diat the
President was defeated, not by the newspapers,
which had been against him from the start, but
by the Supreme Court’s reversal of its own con-
stitutional interpretations and by the retire-
ment of Justice Van Devanter. This changed
the trend of public opinion, and the newspapers
reinforced the trend by praising the new inter-
pretations of the Constitution as fulsomely as
they had praised diametrically opposite inter-
pretations a year and two years earlier.

T HE newspapers which took part in the
campaign against Justice Black are con-
vinced that they performed a noble service to
the country. They do not yet observe that they
met defeat in their primary, or at least their

1 Reprinted by permission from the January, 1938 issue
of Social Education for distribution with the February
Letter of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Inc.,
130 Morningside Drive, New York City. Mr. Brant,

ostensible objective, which was to force Justice
Black off die court, and it will be some years,
probably, before the truth dawns on them diat
the campaign against Justice Black, instead of
being a statesman-like effort to protect the Su-
preme Court against prejudice and bigotry, was
in itself a prejudiced and bigoted misuse of die
channels of publicity. I say this as one who
abhors to the utmost the spirit of the Ku Klux
Klan, and as one who despises the political op-
portunism which makes ambitious men cater
not only to this organization but to any other
ignoble force, temporary or permanent, that
gets in a position to aid or block political
preferment.

I BELIEVE that the attitude of the press
toward Justice Black will be stamped in
time as the most discreditable tour de force of
the present journalistic epoch, not because the
newspapers were opposed to the Black appoint-
ment, not because they produced evidence that
he had been a member of the klan, not because
they expressed alarm over the possible effect of
this klan affiliation, not because they called for
Justice Black’s resignation or removal. The
campaign will be stamped as discreditable be-
cause from first to last it was a presentation of
news colored to produce a desired effect, and to
prevent unbiased judgment by the people. Some
day, undoubtedly, there will be a careful analy-
sis of this campaign. I merely wish to suggest,
by two or three details, how it departed from
the standard of uncolored presentation of the
news which is rightly called the foundation of
freedom of the press.

The most convincing defense of Justice Black
that I have read is a letter written by a Jewish
rabbi in Birmingham, Alabama, a man who has
been a rabbi more than forty years and has
known Mr. Black for twenty-five years. This let-
ter has been read aloud in public addresses, it
has been sent to various people over the coun-
try. It is a short letter. It is available for publi-

author of Storm Over the Constitution , is editor of the
editorial page of the St. Louis Star-Times. This address
was delivered before the National Council for the Social
Studies at St. Louis on November 29, 1937.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

cation. But so far as I know it has never been
published in any newspaper in the United
States.

The New York Times and other newspapers
sent their ace reporters to Birmingham to in-
quire about the reputation of Mr. Black as to
racial and religious prejudice. They found
nothing against him, but what they reported
in his favor lost force because it came from
political sources, the Birmingham postmaster
and the governor of Alabama. Not one of these
brilliant reporters, apparently, thought of ask-
ing the Jewish rabbi whether Justice Black was
prejudiced against Jews. And when the rabbi,
on his own initiative, came to the defense of
Justice Black and told how Black had fought
against the Ku Klux Klan and defeated the
klan in its effort to drive a Jewish school princi-
pal out of the schools of Birmingham, that was
not classed as news fit to print.

The newspapers departed still further from
journalistic principles in presenting their chief
accusation against Justice Black, that he had
accepted a life membership in the klan. This
charge was published in advance of the evi-
dence on which it was based. The evidence
proved to be an admission card, or pass, to klan
lodges, with no mention on it or anywhere else
of a life membership. Whether this card was or
was not a life membership was a matter of opin-
ion, of interpretation. Under the rule of un-
colored presentation of the news, it would have
been legitimate journalism to publish the fact
that Mr. Black received this admission card,
and relate the circumstances under which he
received it. It would have been equally legiti-
mate to make the claim, editorially, that this
admission card was in truth a life membership,
or that it was a membership lasting until the
card was thrown away, or that it was no mem-
bership at all. But the newspapers did not pre-
sent the uncolored fact and then interpret it A
They presented the interpretation as a fact,
thus fixing it as a fact in the public mind before
disclosing that it was an interpretation. That
was not presentation of news. It was propa-
ganda in the news columns.

The final count against Justice Black, #nd
the one that seems to have most weight today,
is that he deceived the Senate, either by silence
about his klan membership while it was under
discussion, or by denying that he had been a
member. Immediately after Mr. Black made his
radio speech, admitting his former membership

in the klan, Senator Borah made the comment
that Justice Black had stated the situation as he
—Borah— understood it when the Senate voted
for confirmation. Here was what appeared to
be the material for a journalistic sensation.
Senator Borah, during the debate on confirma-
tion, had challenged anybody to prove that
Black was connected with the klan. It was
Borah’s speech, more than anything else, that
seemed to convict Black of deceiving his col-
leagues in the Senate. And then Borah admitted
that he knew it all the time. How did he know
it? From whom did he learn it, and when? You
would think that every newspaper in America
would be clamoring for an explanation from
Senator Borah. How was his admission re-
ceived? It was ignored. The New York Times
wrote a little pip-squeak editorial, pointing to
the conflict between Borah’s two statements,
but failed to draw the obvious conclusion. Did
the great news machine of the American press
unlimber itself to get the facts? It did not. Why
not? Because the evidence would have shown
that Justice Black did not deceive the Senate.
There was no way on earth by which Senator
Borah could reasonably have foreknown the
facts set forth by Justice Black in his radio
speech, except directly or indirectly, from Black
himself.

I HAVE described this campaign of propa-
ganda, not for the sake of defending Justice
Black, who will make his own reputation, good
or bad, on the Supreme Court, but because it
shows more clearly than anything else in recent
years what is the matter with the American
press. Fundamentally, the campaign was not
directed against Justice Black as a member or
former member of the Ku Klux Klan, but
against him as a man whose record in the Senate
created fear that he would be prejudiced against
big business. The anti-Black campaign, owing
to the racial and religious issues involved, pro-
duced an alignment in the public at large far
different from the ordinary lines of political
and economic cleavage, but the core of it was
hostility to Black’s economic and social radical-
ism. That was what set the forces in motion
against him. The public response to this cam-
paign was creditable to the instincts of those
who thought civil liberties were in danger and
to the discernment of those who thought they
were not in danger, but the campaign itself,
in its genesis and management, has a far more

THE PRESS AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

fundamental importance. It was a controlled
departure from the accepted standards of jour-
nalism, and it was a departure resulting from
economic determinism in the field of newspaper
publishing. This economic determinism is what
is destroying the power of the press by under-
mining the confidence of the people in it.

T HE metropolitan newspaper is coming to
be recognized as a part of American big
business. It represents an investment of mil-
lions of dollars. Dependence on advertising ties
it more closely to the business world. The typi-
cal large-city publisher lives and thinks in terms
of million-dollar finance. In nearly all the re-
lationships that affect his political and eco-
nomic opinions, he stands in the same position
as the steel manufacturer, the bank president,
the mine operator, the public utility magnate,
or the department store owner. The newspaper
publisher has an interest identical with that of
any other big business man in matters affecting
stability of investments, the weight and pur-
poses of taxation, relations with labor, redistri-
bution of wealth.

The owner of a newspaper is under a ter-
rific compulsion toward political conservatism,
which to him means saving the country, and
offers a mighty field for editorial patriotism.
Out of such materials the fundamental policy
of the American press has been built up. This
trend toward conservatism is all the more im-
pressive if you recognize that there are many
liberal newspaper publishers in the country,
and that great newspaper properties are built
up through the popular appeal of liberal poli-
cies. The trouble with journalistic liberalism is
that it seldom can withstand the strain of great
prosperity, and it is not hereditary. Call the roll
of the conservative newspapers of America and
you will find an amazing number that were
built up through militant liberalism, but which
through changes of ownership, through changes
in family ideals from one generation to the
next, or through the sheer pressure of reinvested
profits, have become bulwarks of American cap-
italism in its most reactionary aspects.

W ITH this preliminary I invite you to look
at the amazing phenomenon we have in
the United States today— a political philosophy
which we call the New Deal, completely trium-
phant in national policy as expressed in a presi-

dential election, yet practically unrepresented
in that upper stratum of the American press
which dignifies itself by the title of the fourth
estate. If journalism were quickly responsive to
political trends, there would have sprung up
long before this a mushroom growth of liberal
newspapers, all of them devoted to the New
Deal and appealing for the blessings of its fol-
lowers. Why has there been no such develop-
ment? For two reasons. First, the cost of estab-
lishing a daily newspaper in a large city runs so
far into the millions that it can be undertaken
only by men of great wealth. The same is true
of the purchase of an existing newspaper. Men
wealthy enough to buy or establish newspapers
are not usually interested in an extension
of liberalism. In the second place, the estab-
lished conservative newspapers protect them-
selves against public disfavor in a very credit-
able way. They put out newspapers which sat-
isfy the main necessities and desires of liberal
readers, to an extent at least sufficient to dis-
courage tire entry of new competition. What
^e these necessities and desires? To know the
/ news of the world, and to be entertained. A
newspaper which presents the news fairly and
comprehensively, and which has appealing
comic strips, can weather an astounding amount
of opposition to its editorial policies.

I believe that the comparative strength of the
news columns of American newspapers— their
strength in comparison with American editorial
columns and in comparison with European
news columns— has been due to the necessities
of self-defense. Our newspapers have had to do
something to compensate for their hostility to
the political views of their readers. What they
have done is present ordinary political news in
relatively unbiased fashion, though still retain-
ing what might be called an institutional bias—
for instance, against a labor party, or a strike in
the steel industry, or socialism, or Justice Black.

If I may repeat, here is what makes it pos-
sible to have a metropolitan press fundamen-
tally out of sympathy with the prevailing
thought of the nation. First, a community of
interest between newspaper publishers, who are
either wealthy or dependent on wealth, and
the great business interests with which a major-
ity of the people are in conflict. Second, the
tremendous cost of establishing competing lib-
eral newspapers. Third, a defense mechanism
by which conservative newspapers offer ex-
tensive and comparatively unbiased news re-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

ports as recompense for editorial hostility to
liberalism.

I doubt whether this is a permanent align-
ment. I do not believe it is possible for any
political philosophy to remain dominant in the
United States over a period of years without
forging an instrument for its expression in jour-
nalism. However, the inescapable fact is that
we have no press today representing the domi-
nant political thought of the country, and there
is no immediate prospect of such a press being
established on a national scale. I look upon that
fact as the most dangerous single factor in
American politics. It tends to paralyze the leg-
islative branch of government, rendering it un-
able to deal with hopes and demands based
upon economic distress, and by this frustration
tends to drive the nation through chaos to
despair.

W E have, it is true, the radio. The radio
has been a factor in emancipation of the
people from sole reliance upon the press, and
when I say emancipation I mean emancipation.
It is possible now for two candidates for Presi-
dent, or more than two, to go before the people
of the entire nation and make their pleas for
election without being dependent in the slight-
est degree upon the goodwill of the newspapers.
If the newspapers distort a speech by unfair
headlines or an improper summary, the people
have a criterion of their own— the memory of
what they heard with their own ears— to correct
the wrong impression. Also, through the radio,
the personality of candidates for office may be'
presented with a skill limited only by the per-
sonality itself. And if that personality is too
alluring in its appeal, the newspaper next day
offers, in cold type, the text by which the first
judgment may be corrected. The radio may
have sins of its own to answer for, but in the
choosing of a national executive it has given
political democracy an instrument for its ful-
fillment.

To a much lesser degree, this holds true also
in the election of United States senators, con-
gressmen, and the governors of states. The radio
is an adequate forum for debate among all con-
tenders for important office. What happens,
however, once these officers are elected? The
President continues to carry his policies to the
people, over the radio and through the columns
of the newspapers.

AS long as the President maintains this direct
ii appeal, and as long as the people continue
to look upon him as their friend and champion,
he is impregnable to the criticism of a hostile
press. But what about senators and congress-
men and governors and state legislators? What
part do they play in the fashioning of a per-
manent political policy? And what influence
does the press have upon them?

What we call the New Deal exists as an un-
written compact, undefined in its terms but
definite in its objectives, between President
Roosevelt and the 27,000,000 voters who re-
elected him a year ago. Since that time, thanks
to a rebellion in Congress against virtually
every item in the President’s program, and to
tactical mistakes by the President himself, there
has been no advance in a year’s time toward the
underlying objectives. I do not wish to advance
the argument that, in these differences of opin-
ion, the President is right and Congress is
wrong. But let me present this thought. Sup-
pose that on some occasion when the President
is taking one of his periodic trips upon an
American warship, the magazine explodes. Or
suppose that an infected tooth produces a simi-
lar result. What would be left of the New Deal?
What would be left of a functioning American
government?

Now I know there are some who will say that
the President has absorbed the government into
his own hands. But, if you eliminate him, you
have everything that the government had in
1932— a conservative Congress, a Vice President,
in line for the presidential succession, who is
not strikingly different in social and economic
outlook from Herbert Hoover. In brief, if Presi-
dent Roosevelt should disappear you would
have precisely the kind of government that
would result from his defeat by a conservative.

I am not so narrow in my conception of
democracy as to believe that a freely chosen
conservative government, reflecting the calm
judgment of a majority of the people, would be
incapable of handling the country’s affairs. But
I can conceive of no more dangerous situation
than to have a nationally dominant and highly
emotional liberalism represented solely by the
chief executive and a few of his aids, while all
other branches of the government are secretly
or openly hostile even to the broad objectives
of the President’s policies, and are looking only
for a chance to sabotage them. I can conceive of

THE PRESS AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

no more dangerous alternative to such a frus-
trated liberalism than to have it lead to a change
of political control based on disillusion and
despair, as it may easily do in a period of re-
newed depression and general unemployment.

W HAT lies ahead of us if the New Deal
fails? I tell you that if the political future
is determined by the inability of the Roosevelt
administration to deal with basic economic
problems, what lies ahead is the loss of hope
by tens of millions of people, a devastating war
between capital and labor, an imminent col-
lapse of the business structure, a reaching out
for control of the government, and a choice at
the polls between a far more radical New Deal
and the concealed fascism of big business.

A GAINST this prospect what have you? You
l \ have the whole burden of constructive
leadership thrown upon one man in the White
House, and that leadership rendered abortive
because there is no articulate public opinion to
support a genuine attack upon the destructive
economic forces that periodically paralyze the
industrial life of the nation. What have we had
since 1933? First, a makeshift New Deal whose
errors were intensified by the inability of Con-
gress to offer constructive criticism growing out
of a basic sympathy. Second, a New Deal which
a hostile Congress has whittled down and com-
promised and rendered as abortive as possible.
And today, a New Deal threatened with total
disruption because a periodic slump in busi-
ness, caused chiefly by monopolistic price con-
trol and profiteering, creates a hope in Congress
that the people may turn against President
Roosevelt.

This is not government. It is chaos. It offers
our country the stability of a powder keg in a
cigaret factory. The government of the United
States, and the people of the United States,
have never in their entire history faced so pre-
carious a future as at the present moment. At
bottom, this must be charged to the power, the
blindness, and the obstinacy of a capitalist busi-
ness system which would destroy itself rather
than follow a painful road to salvation. But
part of it represents the tragedy of the Ameri-
can press, which is both a part of die business
system and its most powerful lobbyist. If the
present occupant of the White House, thanks
to personality and the radio, has been able to

emancipate himself from the veto power of the
American press, the same emancipation can not
be said to have been attained to any appreciable
extent by die lesser figures in our government-
lesser men individually, but collectively as im-
portant as the President, and in an ideal sense
more important.

T HE collective weight of American news-
papers lies like a mountain of woodpulp
upon Congress and state legislatures. The coer-
cive force of a newspaper, directed against
specific legislation, bears lightly upon the Presi-
dent, but heavily upon a local congressman. By
mere silence, the press exposes senators and
congressmen to the savage attacks of a business
lobby, and, when the President’s position is
weakened by a business recession, the total lack
of a public press supporting his objectives per-
mits a sweep of power to the forces in op-
position.

The almost solid alignment of metropolitan
newspapers against the Roosevelt administra-
tion is the entrenching force behind a dishar-
mony diat may wreck our government at any
great increase of economic strain. The news-
papers of America furnish no driving force for
social reform that touches the economic system.
They are a positive handicap in economic re-
form. And they tend to freeze the legislative
branch of government.

W HEN the United States government, in
1 933> accepted the responsibility for pub-
lic action to restore business activity and insure
social security, it did not simply enter upon a
period of emergency activity, to be discarded as
soon as there were signs of an industrial boom.
It moved from one era in national life to an-
other. It accepted the fruits of the industrial
revolution and the financial revolution— steel,
steam, and electricity in the field of industry,
the creation of the corporation in the field of
finance.

We entered a new world in 1933, and entered
it suddenly. Barriers which had held for thirty
years, and some which had held for a hun-
dred years, were suddenly broken down. We
had to catch up with Europe in the field of
social security, and part company with Asia in
the ruination of land. We had to, and still have
to, deal with the incredible sight of a starving,
ragged, slum-dwelling population in a nation

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

with the greatest wealth-producing capacity in
all the history of the human race. We had to
deal with the problem of a business machine
that periodically breaks down, a financial sys-
tem that knows no law of survival except the
law of the jungle, and a society so interlocked
and integrated and technologically interdepend-
ent that the maintenance of business activity be-
comes an inescapable function of government.

T O what extent is this development in hu-
man affairs admitted and acted upon by the
American press? It is impossible to point to one
important constructive step taken in the United
States in the last eight years which represents
either the inventiveness, the initiative, or the
supporting activity of the American press. For
a few months in 1933, during the bank holiday
and in the preliminary stages of the NRA, there
was an emotional response to the initiative
shown by President Roosevelt.

From the day the newspapers were invited to
put a curb on child labor in their own industry,
from the day they were asked to limit the hours
of their employes to forty per week and to pay
reporters a minimum wage of twenty-five dol-
lars, from the day they were told that the law
guaranteed newspaper employes the right to or-
ganize for collective bargaining, from that day
the metropolitan newspapers of the United
States have been substantially regimented
against the New Deal, the agent of regimen-
tation being the American Newspaper Pub-
lishers Association.

Incidentally, may I say at this point that it is
a great pleasure to work for a newspaper whose
publisher does not care what I say about the
American Newspaper Publishers Association.

For four years the American Newspaper Pub-
lishers Association has been deluging its mem-
bers with bulletins. First it attempted to regi-
ment the editorial opinion of the country
against the wage and hour and collective
bargaining provisions of the NRA. Then it
launched a collective campaign against ratifi-
cation of the Child Labor Amendment. Finally
it turned its guns upon the National Labor
Relations Act, not only furnishing arguments
which editors might use to prove the uncon-
stitutionality of that law, but advising pub-
lishers to refuse to obey it.

I do not know to what extent the ANPA has
influenced editorial opinion, but I do believe
that the attempt of metropolitan newspapers to

protect their own system of child labor, euphe-
mistically styled the “little merchant system,”
has been one of the principal causes of public
distrust of the press. I believe that the open and
obvious anti-labor bias of a great majority of
our larger newspapers, and the smug assump-
tion that readers cannot penetrate the veil of
pretended impartiality, have been more potent
than the presidential election in discrediting
metropolitan journalism among the masses of
the American people.

T O whatever extent the ANPA has suc-
ceeded in imposing the views of its conserv-
ative directorate upon member newspapers over
the country, to that extent it has weakened the
American press as a free institution, and to that
extent it has reduced the confidence of the
American people in the press of the country.
I object to this attempt at regimentation not
because it is conservative, but because it weak-
ens the basis of our American democracy. I
would object to it just as strongly if it came
from liberals. Any attempt at the centralized
control of opinion is an attack on the freedom
of the human mind. The attempted regimenta-
tion of the press by the American Newspaper
Publishers Association is most dangerous as a
symptom, a symptom of that automatic regi-
mentation which comes from a common view
of economic interest, applied in the form of
political pressure upon the local representatives
of a national administration.

I would rather see the American government
wholly conservative, by a vote of the people,
than to see the hopes and aspirations of the
people subjected to recurring disillusion. That
disillusion we shall have if we go on, building
up hope through presidential promises to the
people, only to see them torn down through
legislative compromise or administrative fail-
ure. The spoils system is placed above adminis-
trative efficiency. Why? Chiefly because there is
no recognition in Congress, and no driving
force in the American press compelling rec-
ognition, that administrative efficiency must be
put behind the present undertakings of the gov-
ernment, if we are to escape national chaos.

We face the threat of ruinous inflation of
prices and the collapse of government credit.
Why? Because, through the will of the people,
and the compelling force of the industrial revo-
lution, we are permanently committed to costly
social enterprises, but Congress does not recog-

A 1938 PRESS JOB

nize this fact, and the President does not dare
propose taxation as a substitute for borrowing
until the people are educated to it. What does
the press contribute to a solution of this prob-
lem? It raises a cry for retrenchment, which
would be a valuable cry indeed if intelligently
directed, but the cry becomes merely a queru-
lous complaint when it forms a part of indis-
criminate protest against the social and eco-
nomic program of the New Deal. If inflation
comes upon us to a disastrous extent, the fault
will rest largely with the newspapers of Amer-
ica, which refuse to correlate social objectives
with the costs of government, and watch like
hungry vultures for the President to make a
mistake which will let them pounce on him and
destroy him and his program.

P RESIDENT ROOSEVELT, it has been
pointed out, has an uncanny sense of tim-
ing. He knows when not to do a thing. Build

the obstacles too high and this means that the
time to do a thing is never. It means losing
precious years, wasting efforts, junking vast en-
terprises, and final failure. If failure comes, and
disillusion and chaos with it, it will not be
President Roosevelt’s fault. It will be because
there is no agency of public opinion consistently
building with him, and working to fuse the
three branches of government into an instru-
mentality for carrying out the will of the people.

Never in American history was there so great
need to move from unified political thought
into unified political organization and action.
Against this necessary step, the American press,
responsive to the narrowest interpretation of
the economic interest of its owners, stands as the
chief obstacle. I hope that it may not be written
down in history as the stumbling block over
which American democracy is to fall.

A 1938 Press Job'

N EVER in American history was there so
great need to move from unified thought
into unified political organization and action.
Against this necessary step the American press,
responsive to the narrowest interpretation of
the economic interest of its owners, stands as
the chief obstacle. I hope that it may not be
written down in history as the stumbling block
over which American democracy is to fall.”

Those words were not written by a news-
paperneedler. They are the conclusion of Irving
Brant, editor of the editorial page of the St.
Louis Star-Times , to an article in the current
issue of Social Education. He is a newspaper-
man of many years* experience, an expert on
constitutional questions. If his general sym-
pathies run toward the New Deal, they are not
colored by prejudices which disqualify him as
a critic of newspapers.

His conclusion is based upon premises of
continuing gravity to newspapermen:

That newspapers’ treatment of the Black case

1 Reprinted by permission from the editorial page of the
January 22, 1938 issue of Editor and Publisher for dis-
tribution with the February Letter of the Institute for
Propaganda Analysis, Inc., 130 Morningside Drive, New
York City.

“from first to last was a presentation of news
colored to produce a desired effect to prevent
unbiased judgment by the people.” The news-
paper case against Black, Brant charges, rested
on the fear that he would be prejudiced against
big business.

That a political philosophy which we call the
New Deal, “completely triumphant in national
policy, is yet practically unrepresented in that
upper stratum of the American press which dig-
nifies itself by the title of the fourth estate.” He
notes that newspapers which present the news
fairly and comprehensively— as he concedes
most do— and which have appealing comic
strips, can weather astounding opposition to
editorial policies.

He doubts this can be a continuing phenome-
non, but while he believes that no political
philosophy can remain dominant here without
forging itself an instrument for journalistic
expression, he sees no immediate prospect of
that instrument. Its lack, he believes, is the most
dangerous single factor in American politics-
tending to paralyze the legislature, rendering it
unable to deal with hopes and demands based
upon economic distress, and by this frustration,
tending to drive the nation through chaos to

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

despair. If radio is the answer for the President,
it is not for the legislators, which are immedi-
ately subject to local newspaper information.

“By mere silence,” he argues, “the press ex-
poses senators and congressmen to the savage
attacks of a business lobby, and, when the Presi-
dent’s position is weakened by a business reces-
sion, the total lack of a public press supporting
his objectives permits a sweep of power to the
forces in opposition. . . . The newspapers of
America furnish no chiving force for social re-
form that touches the economic system. They
are a positive handicap in economic reform.
And they tend to freeze die legislative branch
of government.”

* * •

If you grant diat there is a New Deal which
commands the overwhelming support of the
country on concrete issues, it is hard to reject
Mr. Brant’s conclusions. Even without granting
that premise, it must be admitted that the vari-
ously construed missions of the New Deal have
met with limited newspaper sympathy, though
we do not accept the dictum that “newspapers
furnish no driving force for social reform that
touches the economic system” or that “they are
a positive handicap to economic reform.”

Those terms have to be defined again. Pos-
sibly the two major economic reforms effected
by Mr. Roosevelt have been the insurance of
bank deposits and the regulation of stock spec-
ulation. There was no strong newspaper opposi-
tion to either the FDIC or the SEC, nor to the
divorce of affiliates from deposit banking.

Newspapers strenuously opposed the NRA,
apart from the fight on the newspaper code.
NRA was a “reform” widi failure written on its
face from birth. It was an effort to reverse the
generation-long battle against monopoly,
coupled with an unworkable political device to
appease labor. The act could be operated until
the country was conditioned to its necessity,
which it could not be in the brief minutes be-
tween enactment and attempted enforcement
five years ago.

It failed, not because some newspapers fought
the 4.0-hour week and the child labor clauses.
It failed, even before the Supreme Court invali-
dated it, because our business and political
intelligence of the day could not make it suc-
ceed.

Certainly our technical achievements in man-
ufacture and distribution have outrun our

understanding of them. The men who devised
the Detroit assembly lines 25 years ago had no
notion then that they were creating a new
economic order; they were simply taking one
step after another in what they considered
progress. Some got rich, and their work changed
the face of the country— but today few under-
stand all of its implications. Yet those implica-
tions must be understood and projected into
the future, if we are to govern them.

We believe other editors than Mr. Brant have
struggled hard and honestly with this problem,
which is fundamental. We believe they want it
solved before its weight pulls down the national
economy, and we do not believe they want it
solved in the selfish interest of the mythical “60
Families,” or by further submergence of the
“forgotten third.”

The job involves redistribution of wealth—
but a poll of the Congress, the Cabinet, and
citizens of all strata would find few in agree-
ment on how it can be done and to what extent.
Newspaper editors and publishers are in no
better accord. To say that an actual or tacit
conspiracy exists among them to balk social
progress is absurd. Some have been mulishly
bigoted in their fight on the New Deal; the
majority have counseled against moves which
they considered unsound. Perhaps they have
not been too convincing. There has been so
much expediency and clever thinking in W ash-
ington that it is difficult to follow the general
trend, or even to find one, of genuine New Deal
policy.

Let us examine the idea that obstructive
newspaper tactics paralyze the legislature. If
most newspapers opposed Mr. Roosevelt’s plan
to reform the Supreme Court, so did a strong
minority of the President’s friends in Congress
—before newspapers had printed a line of news
or comment. That Congress was paralyzed as a
legislative body, but can it be said that news-
paper comment intimidated Senator Wheeler,
Senator Borah, Senator Johnson, Senator Ash-
urst, or Representative Rayburn? Or Senator
Guffey, on the other side? Newspapers did not
cause and could not correct that paralysis,
which traced directly to Mr. Roosevelt’s mis-
conception of his mission.

We cannot go along with Mr. Brant in the
concept that the voters gave Mr. Roosevelt any
specific mandate in 1936. They did manifest
confidence in his general policies, but we doubt
that any went to the polls understanding clearly

A 1938 PRESS JOB

what Mr. Roosevelt meant when he said “in my
first term, the forces of reaction have met their
match; in my next, they will meet their master."
That is political rhetoric. In the light of recent
events, it doesn’t stand analysis.

Those events also brought a message to the
press. The panic, depression or recession or
whatever it is that now grips us, arose, we be-
lieve, from the usual combination of greed and
ignorance. From the top-salaried men of the
country down, we are almost as ignorant of
economic facts as we are of Tagalog. The big
manufacturer presses for more and more pro-
duction as prices rise, and is amazed when he
finds the stuff backing up on his sidings and his
plant shut down. His workman, certain that the
sun is now shining for good, hocks the next 18
months’ wages to buy a radio, automobile, re-
frigerator, and anything else that can be fi-
nanced— and is equally amazed when he finds
there isn’t enough left for a needed suit of
clothes.

He and the manufacturer share the blame for
the paralysis of business, and the degree of
culpability for each isn’t important. All are
playing with forces they don’t understand.
None can say with certainty that we ever
emerged from the panic that culminated in
1933, and that the years between 1933 and 1937
were not a fool’s paradise. No one yet knows
how far government can go with borrowed
money, nor how heavily taxes can be imposed
without drying up the source.

To argue that we cannot learn the answers
except by experience is to declare that we are
still in the age when men feared eclipses as signs
of divine anger. Those answers won’t be found
in any panacea. They won’t be found by calling
names. They won’t be found by trying to split
Congress to the point where legislative action is
impossible. They won’t be found in roars of
“Beat Roosevelt,’’ echoing Senator Vanden-
burg’s contribution to the 1936 Republican
convention.

Which brings us to the point where we are in
substantial agreement with Irving Brant. The
job of informing and of co-ordinating informa-
tion is the newspaper’s above any other agency.
It is a reporting job. The basic need is informa-
tion. If the White House had it, we should not
be having today’s blank-cartridge battles. If
Congress had it, we should not be witnessing a
continuation of the 1937 sterility, in the face of
the country’s plight.

We believe that nearly 2,000 newspapers,
with selfishlv patriotic motives, can perform
this vital service. We believe that the press can
bring about the mutual understanding between
business and government and the public— as
operators, producers, and consumers— that is
essential to permanent progress. It will take
real investigation and convincing writing, func-
tions of the press which no other agency can
perform. We see that as the great opportunity
in 1938.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. To understand newspapers better and to be-
come more familiar with our own newspaper read-
ing habits, conduct the following experiment: Ask
each member of the group to make three lists. 2 List
A should contain the following information: names
of papers read regularly; average daily and Sunday
time devoted to each paper; parts of the paper or
papers regularly read (e.g., columnists, editorials, so-
ciety, sports, comics, foreign news, local news, sen-
sational news, headlines only, advertisements, etc.).
List B should contain the same information if you
had only fifteen minutes a day for newspaper read-
ing. List C should contain the following informa-
tion: If you were advising a high school student how
best to devote one hour a day to newspaper reading,

2 This experiment as well as all group experiments
should be conducted with a spirit of honesty, fair play,
and desire to see individual activities in group relation-
ships. It should be borne in mind that the purpose of

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

which newspaper or newspapers and which parts
would you suggest his reading?

2. Compare these lists. Do they help explain the
size of the modern newspaper? How do our back-
grounds and interests influence our reading? Do we
read as intelligently as we would have high school
students read?

3. Go through the main papers in your citv and
check (V) those headlines which in vour opinion
deserve greater prominence; place an X beside those
which you believe deserve less prominence. Indicate
where you think these should be placed (front page,
inside, second section, etc.). Compare vour placing
with those of other members of the group. Discuss
the possible reasons the editors of the newspapers

such experiments and discussion is not to lay bare in-
dividual foibles but to build a composite picture of
activity based upon individual activities.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

had for placing the headlines the way they did.
What are the reasons for your own placing?

4. Discuss in the group the relative importance
which should be given in the press to crime, labor
disputes, international wars, unusual happenings
like the birth and activities of the Dionne Quin-
tuplets, sports, scientific experiments, local politics,
education, etc. It will be necessary to define clearly
some basic values generally recognized by modern
society to which all these can be referred.

5. Before reading the news account of a current
important public speech, read the complete text as
printed in the paper. Indicate briefly how you
would have reported the speech, what headlines
you would have written, what editorial comments you
would have made. Read the speech again and under-
line the parts of the speech which you believe the
speaker emphasized by a rise in his voice or a dra-
matic pause. Does this make any difference in the
way you would have reported the speech? Compare
your reporting, headlines, and editorial comments
with those of several newspapers.

6. Make a dictionary of Name Calling (from news
accounts, quotations, editorials, headlines, cartoons,
etc.) for the newspapers which you read. Add similar
illustrations to your “Blah’' Dictionary.

7. The American Constitution and the “Bill of
Rights” frequently mention various kinds of free-
dom to be preserved. Are these freedoms modified
and explained by the Constitution’s emphasis on
the common good, “the public welfare”? What does
this mean for editorial policy? Does advertising pol-
icy affect editorial policy? Do pressure groups influ-
ence editorial policy? Compare freedom of the press
in the United States with such freedom in other
countries.

8. Discuss the difficulty of unbiased news gather-
ing and reporting. Attend a strike or political rally
with a friend who has political and economic views
different from your own. Stay together so that you
hear and see the same things, but do not talk about
what you see and hear. Interview speakers, leaders,
and members of the audience. (This may be done
separately.) Then separate and write as accurate and
unbiased a newspaper article as possible. Ask the
group to discuss the two reports, their differences
in tone and bias, emphasis, omissions, etc.

9. Discuss the effect of one’s home training, edu-
cation, reading, interests, etc., on reporting. Of what
does background consist? How much of it is de-
termined by the people with whom we work, eat,
play, talk? The place where we live? The books,
periodicals, and papers we read?

10. Discuss what might be termed “trivial” and
what “important” in daily news. Give each member
of the group a copy of the same paper. Ask every
one to mark each article with a T for trivial, a U
for undecided, or an / for important. Total the
T' s, U’ s, and V s for every article. Does this experi-
ment help us understand better the complicated
task of editing a newspaper?

1 1 . Make a collection of cartoons and pictures ex-
pressing points of view with which you agree. Make
a similar collection for points of view with which
you disagree. You will doubtless wish to include
such subjects as war and peace, prominent national
and international statesmen, taxation, other politi-
cal, social, and economic developments. Discuss the
factual accuracy of these cartoons. Their educational
and informative value. Are all cartoons propaganda?

12. Discuss the difference in form, intent, and
effectiveness of such propaganda methods as the
subtleties of a newspaper’s policy and lay-out, “col-
ored” news reporting and headlines, the more ob-
vious propaganda of editorials and cartoons.

13. In connection with the study of newspapers
as molders and reflectors of public opinion and prop-
aganda, it would be well to consider the similar
effect of magazines. Make a list of all the magazines
regularly read by the members of the group. Indi-
cate the number of readers for each magazine. From
as many local newsstands as possible secure the aver-
age weekly or monthly sales for these and more
widely read magazines. Secure similar figures from
the local library. If possible, secure similar figures
from the magazines themselves for local subscrip-
tions. Compare these magazines with the magazine
reading in Middletown. (Cf. Robert S. and Mary
Merrell Lynd, Middletown , pp. 158, 231, and 239
(1929), and Middletown in Transition, pp. 258-260
(1937), New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.)
Study several issues of each magazine. For each
list the proportions of space devoted to such
subjects as fiction, women’s and household articles;
entertainment; informative articles on national and
international affairs, economics, business, politics,
education; pictures and cartoons; editorials; adver-
tisements; etc. Compare these figures. Discuss the
influence of these magazines on the readers. Discuss
the magazines which in your opinion are the best
for the subjects in which you are interested. Are
you now forming your opinions on the basis of lim-
ited reading and discussion? If you had more time
for reading, which magazines would you add to your
shelf? Can you find time to read these?

Volume I

MARCH, 1938

Number 6

The Movies and Propaganda

C ONTROVERSY has recently broken out
over alleged propaganda in the newsreels.
The National Council for the Prevention of
War has criticized certain of the Panay films as
providing “a running track of dialogue drip-
ping with fiery tirades directed against the
Japanese and having an unquestioned effect of
arousing the American temper/’ One explana-
tion of the sinking of the Panay is that it was
deliberately planned by the Japanese to gauge
American public opinion, to determine whether
the aroused American propaganda against Ja-
pan would be strong enough to alter Japanese
plans for further aggression in China. The same
explanation is applied to Japanese attacks on
British subjects and property in Shanghai, and
to Japanese attacks on Russians in the Amur
region. Whether or not the Japanese committed
these acts for trial balloon purposes, it is certain
that the Japanese authorities are using Ameri-
can, British, and Russian responses to the acts
to measure opinion in America, Britain, and
Russia, and are proceeding accordingly.

The March of Time release, Inside Nazi
Germany , 1938, “is a flaming pro-Nazi story,’’
according to Martin Proctor quoted by The
Nexo York Post. Warner Brothers refused to
show this film in any of their 460 theaters. But
Dr. William E. Dodd, retiring United States
Ambassador to Germany, declared: “The mem-
bers of every American family, young and old,
who believe in liberty and democracy should
by all means see Inside Nazi Germany which
March of Time has so brilliantly produced. It
tells the truth about Hitler’s government.’’

Apparently there is little doubt in the minds
of these critics as to the power of such films to
“influence others to some predetermined end
by appealing to their thoughts and feelings.”

The motion picture dramatist, like the writer
of popular fiction, knows the keys to strike to
arouse the proper emotions. He secures stock
responses by appeals to our interest in sex and
sentimentality; violence and excitement; na-
tionalistic symbols; sweetness, optimism, and
happy endings; wish-fulfilment through reveries
and day dreams; popular prejudices. These ap-

peals and interests are combined in popular
stereotypes which can play significant parts
in conscious or unconscious propaganda. For
example:

1. The successful culmination of a romance zvill
solve most of the dilemmas of the hero and the
heroine. What young lovers are going to live on in a
world of insecurity and unemployment reaches the
screen only rarely, as, for example, in Gentlemen
Are Born.

2. Catch the criminal and you solve the crime
problem. Only rarely does a movie give us some
insight into unemployment, slums, insecurity, as
causes for crime; notable exceptions are Dead End ,
The Devil Is a Sissy, and I Am a Fugitive From a
Chain Gang.

3. War and the preparation for war are thrilling,
heroic, and, glamorous. For one Broken Lullaby, All
Quiet on the Western Front, or The Road Back, we
have had dozens of films such as West Point of the
Air, Annapolis Farewell, Flirtation Walk, Shipmates
Forever, Here Comes the Navy, Devil Dogs of the
Air, and Nai>y Blue and Gold.

4. The good life is the acquisitive life, with its
emphasis on luxury, fine homes and automobiles,
evening dress, swank and suavity. Note, for example,
the economic level of residences shown in a random
selection of 40 feature motion pictures. Of the 228
different residences appearing in these movies, 22
per cent were classifiable as ultra- weal thy, 47 per cent
as wealthy, and 25 per cent moderate. Onlv 4 per
cent were shown as visibly poor. Note, too, that
poverty on the screen is not infrequently a bit ro-
mantic. It is not the mean, bitter, grinding poverty
of the slums of our cities and share-cropper regions.
Further, when we note the heavy emphasis in selec-
tion of leading male characters from the commercial
and professional groups, with almost no representa-
tion from the ranks of labor, we get some explana-
tion of the lop-sided notion of the world of
workaday living held by many young people.

5. Certain races, nationalities, or minority groups
are comical, dull-witted, or possess traits that mark
them as greatly different from and inferior to native
white Americans. We see this in the portrayal of the
Negro in roles of inferiority, in the monoded and
simpering Englishman. The motion picture, of
course, is not the only medium of communication
that propagandizes in this fashion. Studies of the

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

stereotypes held by college students show that many
influences have been at work in producing grossly
inaccurate portraits of races and nationalities.

Thus, the motion picture while giving people
enjoyment through fantasy, gives this enjoy-
ment within the framework of commonly ac-
cepted stereotypes and thereby exerts an influ-
ence which tends to strengthen them and to
prevent criticism of them. Only in rare instances
is it an agency for illuminating problems of
human conduct, for developing social insight,
for encouraging a review of our beliefs and cus-
toms, of our modes of governments, and of the
relationships between peoples and races. Con-
tenting themselves with evoking stock responses
to such stereotypes as those listed, the motion
picture producers provide few fdms which give
opportunity for other responses. Eight major
producing companies dominate the film indus-
try. They are influenced not alone by the stereo-
types common to America but also by stereotypes
agreeable to the censors of foreign countries.
According to percentages derived from the 1937
income estimates reported in a recent issue of
Variety 1 44.6 per cent of the gross income of
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 37.2 per cent of the in-
come of Paramount, and 35 per cent of the
income of Twentieth Century-Fox came from
foreign sources. Small wonder, then, that It
Can't Happen Here was not produced, that
British imperialism has often been shown in a
favorable light by Hollywood movies.

An easy, quick, and partially valid reply to
the charges of emphasis on certain stereotypes
is that such emphasis is essential to profitable
mass appeal. Yet this answer is too facile. We
know that such motion pictures as Dead End ,
The Story of Louis Pasteur , and The Life of
Emile Zola have played profitably to huge audi-
ences. We know that the policy of Warner
Brothers in producing clarifying social docu-
ments such as They Won't Forget, Black Legion ,
I Am a Fugitive, have met with financial success.

To recognize and deal with propaganda in a
motion picture we must ask:

1. What are the assumptions about life and hu-
man nature on which this film rests? 2. 'What values
or goals do the characters in the play consider
important? 3. Do we think that they are important?
4. Is this film a defense of things as they are? 5. Is it
an argument for change? 6. Were the problems of
the characters remote from contemporary conditions
or were they closely related to the realities of today?

7. Were the relationships between the characters on
the screen traditional? 8. Would they be acceptable
to intelligent people today? 9. Who wants us to
think this way? 10. What are his interests? 11. Do
they coincide with the interests of ourselves, of most
Americans?

To determine the nature and direction of the
motion picture as a carrier of propaganda we
must ask: What role does it play and what role
might it play in American life ? Shall it provide
entertainment judged only by its power to get
people’s minds off uninspiring work, dreary
surroundings, defeats, dissatisfactions? Shall it
provide social illumination, contribute some-
thing to people’s understanding of themselves
and of the world in which they live? Shall it pro-
vide both, as both have been provided by the
great creators of literature and the drama? The
characteristic of the greatest literature is that it
enlightens while it also entertains; it gives pleas-
ure through bringing people to understand and
to respond more fully to what they did not
understand before.

Such a conception of the role of the motion
picture enables us to look with favor upon de-
lightful fantasy or humor as exemplified in
Snow White and the Seven Dwarf s, It Happened
One Night , and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. It
leads us to praise the portrayal of social realities
as found in Dead End, The Life of Emile Zola,
or The Story of Louis Pasteur. At the same time
it challenges those motion pictures which are
vehicles for pseudo-realities, incorrect generali-
zations, and misleading stereotypes.

( Analysts of propaganda must ask what part
the motion picture plays in effecting or hamper-
ing social change. Does it reduce or increase
intelligent social criticism? In England, for ex-
ample, Lord Harewood defended the institu-
tion of betting, many of the consequences of
which he recognized as undesirable, on the
ground that it occupied public interest and
attention, and so prevented people from becom-
ing dissatisfied with the conditions under which
they are living. Is the same defense made for
movies based on the common stereotypes we
have listed?

To ask that the motion picture should con-
tribute to social enlightenment is to ask no
more than that it should do something which
has always been done by great novelists and
dramatists. It is asking that the motion picture
industry should do more of what it has already
done so well in such films as The Life of Emile

1 Variety, January 19, 1938. V. 129, No. 6, pp. 1 and 8.

THE MOVIES AND PROPAGANDA

3 1

Zola. The success of such films proves that pub-
lic taste is capable of appreciating films of much
greater social value than the majority that are
produced by the industry. Here the student of
propaganda must ask why the industry seems to
lag behind, and even to hold back, the develop-
ment of public taste. He might also ask whether
the praise that has been given to the motion
picture by some distinguished men in the indus-
try on the grounds that it allayed social discon-
tent, was not perhaps a factor in the situation.

Newsreels

The newsreels are another branch of the the-
atrical film industry. All newsreel companies
claim that they are impartial in presenting
news. Nevertheless, an analysis of newsreels
made by two different companies showed that
in 1930 there were four times as many items
favoring the wet side of the prohibition ques-
tion as the dry side, that there were twelve times
as many items dealing with war and defense
preparations and the like as with peace.j We
know, too, of the failure of the Paramount Com-
pany to release at once newsreels showing the
killing of workers in the Republic Steel strike
in Chicago. This failure to release the films was
of undoubted value in building up public an-
tipathy to the alleged violence of the strikers.
Newsreels, too, were used in California to de-
feat Upton Sinclair. The following quotation
from an article by R. S. Ames in Harper's Maga-
zine for March, 1935, describes this activity:

. . . But by mid-October conservatives of both parties
realized that Sinclair could be stopped by no ordi-
nary methods. ... So the screen entered politics.
Surprised patrons of neighborhood movie houses
were suddenly treated to pictures of an indigent
army disembarking from box cars on Los Angeles
sidings. These repulsive-looking bums appeared to
have swarmed in from all corners of the United
States, determined to enjoy the easy pickings of the
promised Sinclair regime. . . . This interpretation of
current events was strangely moving, although those
with critical eyes wondered why the vagrapts were
wearing make-up; and some with good memories at
once recognized excerpts from the Warner Brothers'
previous film fiction Wild Boys of the Road. The
Sinclair cohorts exposed this fraud and the movies
were forced to abandon the use of stock shots there-
after. 2 * *

In spite of these criticisms, a careful examina-
tion of newsreel content over a period of years
shows that they have presented unbiased factual
information on many current controversies.

Advertising Films

Most non-theatrical movies are so-called ad-
vertising films. They may advertise a product
directly or they may, as do many insurance com-
panies, deal with a field of health and merely
present the name or insignia of the company on
the title. They may represent institutional ad-
vertising in which a number of allied industries
have pooled their resources to advertise not a
specific advertised brand but the product itself,
like lumber or cement. Or they may show scenic
beauties and splendors in various parts of the
world and may be made available through
steamship companies and foreign governments.^

Schools receive many films of this type. 8 The
magazine, Business Week , October 30, 1937,
stated:

WTien a large public utility heard of the non-
profit work of the National Educational Film
Foundation, Inc., 11333 Chandler Blvd., North
Hollywood, Calif., it donated $60,000 worth of film
negative which it could no longer use in its own
public relations work. This film will be recut and
re-edited to make educational films for free distribu-
tion to school children all over the country. The
Foundation is looking for more negatives and will
grant publicity privileges under certain restrictions.

What can be done about advertising films?
Here are questions which one superintendent
of schools has pupils in his high school apply:

Most of our films that are shown by the school are
furnished free by the various commercial organiza-
tions. In some cases we only pay transportation
charges, and in some cases we receive them without
any charge. Why do you think these commercial
firms furnish these films for schools?

The film you will see is furnished us by the Na-
tional Industrial Council, a federation of national,
state, and local industrial associations, sponsored b;
the National Association of Manufacturers. After
you have seen the film, will you fill out below why
they should be interested in furnishing this film to
the schools?

What ideas did thev trv to get across to vou?

Sometimes the only true picture is the whole pic-
ture. True, isolated facts mav be misleading, if other

8 See the article by S. H. Walker and Paul Sklar, “Busi-
ness Finds Its Voice,” in the February, 1938 issue of
Harper's Magazine, 176: 317-329.

2 Ames, Richard Sheridan. “The Screen Enters Politics,

Will Hollywood Produce More Propaganda?” Harper's

Magazine, 170: 473-4.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

true facts are not related. Do you think that certain
essential facts were not brought out which should
have been brought out? If so, what would you sug-
gest was ignored in this picture?

In general, do you think that the schools should
show films furnished to us by different organizations
free to our classes as part of our educational pro-
gram?

When you see one of our films, how do you try to
tell if it is

1. Advertising?

2. Propaganda for an idea or ideas?

3. Portrayal of facts? 1 2 3 4

Government Films

Recently the government has produced films
which deal with critical social issues, for ex-
ample, The Plow that Broke the Plains (Dust
Bowl) and The River (Flood Control). The
WPA also has produced and released a number
of motion pictures dealing with its work.

These government efforts have been bitterly
attacked, highly praised. The analyst of propa-

4 Our comment: All three of these may be propaganda.

ganda must determine, first, the role that any
government agency should play in informing
the public of what it is doing; second, the ex-
tent to which this information is misleading
and biased in its presentation; third, whether
the government should rest its case with merely
sensitizing its viewers to a significant social
problem such as soil erosion and flood control,
or whether it should move on from there to
offer specific solutions of these problems.

Suggested Readings

The foregoing analysis of National Socialist
propaganda can do little more than suggest the
techniques used in bringing about and main-
taining German Fascism. For those who wish
detailed accounts to make clearer die day-to-
day developments in the European situation,
caused by the National Socialist program of
expansion, the following books are suggested:

45 Cf. The New York Times, March 29. 1938, and The
New York Sun , March 28, 1938.

Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf
(Munich: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1933), was
begun when he was thirty-five while imprisoned in
the fortress of Landsberg am Lech following the
abortive Putsch of November, 1923. It contains his
program and political theories. An English edition,
considerably abridged, translated by E. T. S. Dug-
dale, has been published under the title of My Battle
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1937. Pp.
viii + 297. §2.50).

Robert A. Brady’s The Spirit and Structure of
German Fascism (New York: The Viking Press,

1 937* Pp x * x + 4 20 * $3-oo) gives a vivid picture of
conditions in Germany under the National So-
cialists.

Frederick L. Schuman’s The Nazi Dictatorship
(2nd ed., revised; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936.
Pp. xiii 516. $3.50) presents a clear account of
the early history and propaganda of the Nazis.

Henri Lichtenberger's The Third Reich , trans-
lated from the French and edited by Koppel S.
Pinson (New York: The Greystone Press, 1937. Fp-
x i -f- 392. $3.00) reviews objectively the functioning
of National Socialism. The appendix, containing
material not readily available, and the excellent bib-
liography are particularly valuable.

Stephen H. Roberts’ The House that Hitler Built
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938. Pp. xii -f
380. §3.00) is a dispassionate judgment of the Hitler
regime. The author, an Australian, devotes much
attention to the army.

Vaso Trivanovitch's Economic Development of
Germany under National Socialism (New York: Na-
tional Industrial Conference Board, Inc., 1937. Pp.
xvii + 141. $3.50) contains valuable material on
such subjects as the organization and the economic
position of labor and industry, foreign trade, and
public finance.

Five Years of Hitler (New York: American Coun-
cil on Public Affairs, 1938. Pp. 46. 15c) sets forth in
headline form an account of what has happened in
National Socialist Germany. The editor is M. B.
Schnapper; the contributors are Frederick L. Schu-
man, Henry Smith Leiper, Robert A. Brady, Alice
Hamilton, Charles A. Beard, and H. C. Engelbrecht.

Calvin B. Hoover’s Dictators and Democracies
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937. Pp. xi
-|- 110. $1.50), while not devoted solely to National
Socialism, is an interpretation of developments in
Germany, Italy, and Soviet Russia as illustrations
of totalitarian states.

Mildred S. Wertheimer's Germany Under Hitler
(New York: Foreign Policy Association and World
Peace Foundation, 1935. Pp. 48. 25c) gives a brief,
concise account of the rise of Hitler to power and
of his first two years as Chancellor of the German
Reich.

The New York Times , New York Herald Trib-
une, and Christian Science Monitor have carried

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

particularly significant day-by-day accounts which
reveal all of the common propaganda devices used
by the German Fascists. These newspapers should
be followed for contemporary evaluation of Nazi
propaganda.

The American Observer , a weekly review of social
thought and action (Civic Education Service, 744
Jackson Place, Washington, D. C., $2.00 a year), is

convenient for those who lack the time to follow the
day-by-day accounts in the better daily newspapers.

Vienna: March , k)-$8—A Footnote for Historians
is “a verbatim record of the Austrian crisis, exactly
as it came to CBS listeners.” Free single copies may
be secured by addressing the Columbia Broadcasting
System, 485 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES 40

1. Discuss Germany’s standing in the world of
science before 1933. Is science merely knowledge or
is it a method? Can it be applied in “non-scientific”
fields (e.g., in politics as well as in physics and chem-
istry)? Does anyone think scientifically today in
politics? Do believers in democracy think more sci-
entifically than believers in other systems? How can
we determine the answer to this question? How does
the scientific method succeed better than another
in discovering the truth? Is it just more critical?

2. How far is it possible for a modern leader of
masses of people to remain adequately critical of
his own conclusions? Does accumulating struggle,
observation, tension, and conviction inevitably drive
his mind into a rut (i.e., rigid dogmas reinforced by
strong feelings)? Discuss this point at some length,
for it is fundamental today.

3. Observe carefully and talk with unemployed
people. Go to the poorest sections of town, cheap
cafeterias, “flop” houses, employment agencies.
Then talk w r ith people on W.P.A., others engaged
in poorly paid, uncertain work. Finally, talk with
men and women in the skilled trades, trades people,
merchants, middle class men and women. Study the
effect of unemployment, uncertain income, eco-
nomic insecurity on these different people. Are they

46 Note for Group Leaders: This subject is the theme of a
highly emotionalized world conflict. Avoid becoming
involved in arguments pro or con. Make it clear at the
outset, and repeatedly thereafter, that you are primarily
a partisan of accuracy, if that be partisanship. Make it
clear that you believe care in thinking is of more lasting
importance to the human race than any single issue.
Therefore, permit yourself to be checked and corrected
at any time. Be willing to reconsider and, if need be, to
revise your judgment. Thus, by example, set the fashion
for the members .of the group.

One of the far reaching effects of propaganda analysis
is the development of a consciousness of one’s own mental
processes. After working through the discussions sug-
gested in this volume, the members of the group should
be more aware than previously of their own assumptions
of certain ideals, objectives, relationships, of what these
are and why they hold them; of the facts which they
know and the sources of their information; of the facts
which they need to know but have not yet ascertained.

This greater awareness, if it has been cultivated by the
leader and the other members of the group in a positive

bitter, resentful, apathetic, indifferent? How do
their attitudes compare toward the kind of govern-
ment we have?

4. Discuss how a creed or political philosophy
that is born in struggle differs from one born in a
Persian garden.

5. Assign the books in the bibliography to dif-
ferent members in the group. Discuss thoroughly
the background and basis of German Fascism. Are
scientific training and mass literacy sufficient to pre-
vent a people from uncritical acceptance of political
panaceas? Discuss the effect of reliance upon “lead-
ers” and authority. Generalizing from the situation
in Germany and from your discussion of Questions
1-4, what factors in the life of a nation do you be-
lieve would make it fertile ground for fascism?
What would prevent it from accepting fascism?

6. Do most people become emotional when the
subject of German Fascism is mentioned? Disregard
on which side the partisanship lies, and make ob-
servations to determine to what the emotionalism
is due. To fear of some coming danger? Is German
Fascism merely one extreme solution imposed on a
continuing social and economic conflict among us?

7. In view of prevalent propagandas, how real
are our freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and

manner, should not result in mere hesitation or luke-
warmness on every vital issue. It should give dynamic
incentive to intellectual activity in two directions. In
one direction, this activity should engage in a thorough,
critical house-cleaning to wipe out mental cobwebs, rusty
ideas, and dusty theories and to build a fresh series of
personally tested and thought-through values. In the
other direction, this activity should engage in the labori-
ous but rewarding hunt for honest facts. It should involve
critical questioning regarding authorities and the
authors of books and articles, of personal observations,
assumptions, and theories.

There is undoubted value in theoretical discussions of
such abstract ideas as truth, justice, beauty. Eventually,
however, such theories must be tested by action. We can
strengthen our ability to act intelligently by getting
into conflict situations and learning to conduct ourselves
with something of the poise of such great men as Lincoln
whose enemies knew that the bitterness and passions of
his contemporaries would not interfere with the compas-
sion and mercy of his decisions.

PROPAGANDA ON THE AIR

worship? Can Germany’s loss of these freedoms be
made up later in better times? Will it modify Ger-
many’s whole future? May America some day be
forced to choose between security and freedom? Does

Lincoln’s great and lasting faith in the judgment of
the people omit the possibility of propagandas as
powerful as those we see in the United States today?

Volume I JUNE, 1938 Number 9

Propaganda on the Air

I N little more than a dozen years radio has
become a major channel of communication.
It is an instrument of propaganda which can
be more immediately effective than the press or
the motion picture. Propagandas of the air
travel with speed of light. Millions of listeners
can hear and respond instantly. Responding to
a Father Coughlin they can persuade Congress
to kill our participation in the World Court
or, with the help of the press, to defeat a govern-
mental reorganization plan by picturing it as
radical, dictatorial; responding to a Huey Long
they can vote to make “every man a king”; re-
sponding to a Franklin Roosevelt they can over-
come a New Deal opposition of 80 per cent or
more of the newspapers; responding to a Wil-
liam J. Cameron they can marshal support for
Henry Ford’s belief in “individualism.” There
is maximum response when the propagandas
are keyed to the hopes, aspirations, resentments,
and hatreds of the people.

In the voices of the air are to be found all
the common devices of propaganda. How are
these used and to what ends? We find the an-
swer in part in the three frameworks in which
radio broadcasting takes place:

1. Democratic, with private ownership
of radio broadcasting, as in the
United States, with some governmen-
tal control.

2. Democratic, with public ownership of
radio broadcasting, as in Great Bri-
tain, with a large measure of govern-
mental control.

3. Totalitarian, as in Germany, with
complete control by the government.

Under private ownership, as in the United
States, radio broadcasting is a business operated
for private profit. The poliq* of the major net-
works is to sell time for the advertising of goods

and services, but not to sell time for the discus-
sion of controversial public issues. They allot
this time free as part of their service to the
public. Any departure which has occurred is in
direct violation of this established policy and
immediately becomes a live issue within the
broadcasting industry. Under private owner-
ship there are two kinds of programs: first, the
“sponsored program” which is paid for by an
advertiser; second, the “sustaining program”
which is provided by the broadcasting com-
pany. The sponsored programs bring to us the
many propagandas of commercial advertising
and, occasionally, the economic or political
views of the sponsors, as in the Ford Sunday
Evening Hour. Many or most are sweetened
and made palatable by music or other enter-
tainment— the formula of the old time medicine
show. The sustaining programs, such as the Uni-
versity of Chicago Round Table or America’s
Town Meeting of the Air, usually carry views
and opinions on controversial subjects.

Under public ownership, as in Great Britain,
there is no commercial advertising over the
radio. There is, however, some competition of
political and economic propagandas.

Under the totalitarian system there is a mo-
nopoly of propaganda and with it complete
control of radio as a channel of communication.
By selection and emphasis, by suppression and
distortion, the totalitarian regime uses radio to
inculcate the political, social, and cultural at-
titudes and beliefs it considers necessarv or de-
sirable. It holds as unpatriotic or as treasonable
refusal to listen to its more significant political
broadcasts; it punishes those who are discovered
listening to forbidden broadcasts which orig-
inate in radio stations bevond its control. When
Hitler occupied Austria one of the first moves
of the German Fascist regime was to take over
the Austrian radio.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

Freedom to discuss governmental domestic
policies and issues is large in the United States.
It is more restricted in Great Britain, and non-
existant in Germany. Freedom to discuss for-
eign policies is likewise non-existant in Ger-
many, is considerably restricted in England, but
is large in the United States . 1 Radio listeners in
Germany, for example, have no opportunity to
hear the propagandas “for” and “against” inter-
vention in Spain and “for” and “against” the
British-Italian agreement approving Italy’s seiz-
ure of Ethiopia and giving tacit recognition to
Franco. In the United States propagandas flow-
ing from such controversial issues probably have
had a wider hearing over the radio 2 than in any
other democratic country. David Sarnoff , 3 * * * pres-
ident of the Radio Corporation of America,
speaking of broadcasting in totalitarian coun-
tries, said:

Broadcasting in those autocracies serves the inter-
est, convenience and necessity, not of the public, but
of totalitarian government. It is allowed to present
only one side of public issues. ... It is no coincidence
that where freedom of thought and of speech are
denied on the air, they are equally denied on the
platform, in the university, and in the church. It is
no coincidence that where you find broadcasting en-
slaved, you also find a slavish press.

The American System

American radio, with its greater freedom,
provides many kinds of programs, disseminates
many propagandas. However, to this American
“freedom of the air” apply several restrictions.

The first is physical. Because the number of
available wave lengths for radio broadcasting
is limited, the number of radio stations must
be limited. To prevent interference and “jam-
ming,” only those stations may broadcast which
are licensed by the Federal Communications

Commission. A license may be revoked if the
Commission finds that the broadcasting com-
pany is not serving “public interest, conveni-
ence, and necessity.” In practice, licenses are
granted for six month periods only.

While the law which sets forth the powers of
the Commission withholds from it power to
“interfere with the right of free speech,” some
see possibilities for censorship in the interpre-
tation and application of the law, among them
David Sarnoff/ who recently said:

While direct Government censorship over radio
programs is . . . forbidden by law, the terms of the
Government licenses leave the door open for an
indirect — and more insidious — censorship. Any
attempt to impose the ordinary “blue pencil” censor-
ship is little to be feared, because, being a conspic-
uous violation of the right of free speech, it would
arouse a storm of public protest. But what is not
conspicuous — and is therefore dangerous — is the
effect on the mind of the broadcaster, resulting from
attitudes that may be taken by the government to-
ward stations, on matters outside the regulation of
facilities.

Fear of disapproval can blue-pencil a dozen pro-
grams for every one that an official censor might
object to. While practically nobody advocates a
pre-program blue-pencil in the hands of govern-
ment, few realize that post-program discipline by the
government can be a form of censorship that is all
the more severe because it is undefined.

A more important restriction than that thus
far imposed by the Federal Government is in-
herent in American radio as in any other busi-
ness operated for profit. Some radio stations,
like some newspapers, are not eager to dissemi-
nate propagandas repugnant to influential ad-
vertisers. This is explained by the fact that
broadcasting, like any other business, or like
preaching or school teaching, takes on the color

1 Eugene J. Young, cable editor of The New York Times,

in his book, Looking Behind the Censorships (New York:

J. B. Lippincott Company, 1938), tells how difficult it is
for the most competent newspaper reporters to discover

what is going on in the field of foreign policy 7 . This is
true also in democratic countries like Great Britain and
the United States, where, despite the democratic form of

government, the foreign office carries on much of its
work behind a censorship. Mr. Young tells that our own
State Department’s use of censorship is such that occa-
sionally American newspapers first learn about import-
ant Washington developments by reports from their

foreign correspondents in European capitals. A policy of

secrecy which hides facts makes discussion of facts diffi-
cult or impossible and thus serves to restrict freedom of

the air as well as freedom of the press. “Open covenants
openly arrived at” was an American World War slogan
which, however sincere in its initial statement, soon be-
came a Glittering Generality.

8 In The Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1935) the authors, Hadley Cantril and Gordon
W. Allport, state that “when all things are considered,
freedom of the air in America is probably as great as in
most other countries and is certainly greater than in
some.”

8 “The American System of Broadcasting and Its Func-
tion in the Preservation of Democracy,” an address at
the Town Hall Luncheon, Hotel Astor, New York City,
April 28, 1938, p. 11.

4 Ibid., pp. 8-9.

PROPAGANDA ON THE AIR

of the prevailing social order. 5 Even so, sustain-
ing programs often disseminate opinions or
propagandas critical of the prevailing social
order.

A possible restriction of freedom is inherent
in the National Association of Broadcasters’ 0
code of ethics. For example: 1. No program
shall offend public taste and common decency.
(Let our readers try defining “public taste” and
“common decency.”) 2. No program shall be
planned as an attack on the United States Gov-
ernment, its officers or otherwise constituted
authorities or its fundamental principles.
(What is an “attack”? What are “fundamental
principles”? Would defenders of or apologists
for presidential policies be guilty of “attack-
ing”?) 3. No program shall be conceived or
presented for the purpose of deliberately offend-
ing the racial, religious, or otherwise socially
conscious groups of the community. (What is
offensive and when is it deliberate? Would a
church attack on Franco, Hitler, Neville Cham-
berlain, or the Vatican, or a church defense of
these be offensive?)

Advertisers who buy time on the air have
commercial reasons for pleasing a maximum
number of listeners and, if possible, offending
nobody.

To reach the lowest common denominator of
listener appeal, with its emphases on popular
music, popular humor, popular sentiment,
common emotions, and widely accepted stereo-
types, commercial broadcasters have taken over
the “showmanship” concept from the theater,
vaudeville, and the movies. 7

In response to the need of advertisers to reach
a maximum number of listeners has come the
development of nationwide network broadcast-
ing. This has tended to reduce the number of
programs originating in local stations, to re-
duce the contribution of regional cultures as
feeders of the national cultural pool. Increas-
ingly, we draw our national radio culture from
a few major reservoirs, chiefly New York and

Hollywood, with a few inter-connected centers,
such as Washington, D. C. and Chicago. 8

It is natural, therefore, that the American
radio, like the American movies (see Propa-
ganda Analysis for March, 1938) should reveal
a tendency to perpetuate commonly accepted
stereotypes; even so, the fact remains that the
American system provides us with more quan-
tity and probably, in the net, with more quality
than is to be heard by listeners in other coun-
tries. Despite restrictions American stations do
provide something of that freedom of contro-
versy which is the life of public opinion and
the essence of democracy.

Note the policy of the Columbia Broadcast-
ing System, Inc., as expressed by its president,
William S. Paley: 6

. . . the Columbia Network has pledged itself not
only to freedom of the air but to non-partisanship
and fairness of the air.

By freedom of the air we mean the right of any
speaker to express his views, subject only to general
laws and the laws of libel and slander, the rule that
he may not seek to provoke racial or religious hatred
and the ordinary limitations of good taste and the
decorum appropriate to the homes of the nation.

By non-partisanship we mean that broadcasting
as an instrument of American democracy must for-
ever be wholly, honestly and militantly non-partisan.
This is true not only in politics, but in the whole
realm of arguable social ideas. . . .

By fairness we mean that no discussion must ever
be one-sided so long as any qualified spokesman
wants to take the other side. The party in power
must never dominate the air. No majority must ever
monopolize. Minorities must always have fair op-
portunities to express themselves.

Both CBS and NBC in the 1936 presidential
election, despite opposition of anti-Communist
groups, broadcast the campaign speeches of
Earl Browder, Communist candidate for presi-
dent. In this action, the networks followed the
federal law which provides that minority partv
candidates be permitted to buy radio time.

Censorship whether by a government, a

5 As Professor William Graham Sumner wrote in his
book. Folkways, most individuals do not oppose or ap-
prove opposition to the generally accepted habits, cus-
toms, mores, folkways; yet it is only by free criticism of
these that the ones which have outlived their usefulness
to society may be supplanted by new and more socially
useful ways of thinking and acting.

6 Broadcasting in the United States (Washington: Na-
tional Association of Broadcasters, 1933), p. 16.

7 For clear descriptions, almost formulas, of how success-

ful broadcasters obtain and hold audiences, see Kenneth

M. Goode’s What About Radio? (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1937).

8 American broadcasting is dominated by the four major
chains: the National Broadcasting Companv with its
Red and Blue networks of 148 owned or affiliated sta-
tions, the Columbia Broadcasting System with 115 sta-
tions, and the Mutual with 83 stations.

9 Annual Report of the Columbia Broadcasting System,
Inc. for the Fiscal Year ending January 1, 1938, New
York, April 15, 1938, pp. 4-5.

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

group, or an individual illustrates the common
propaganda device of stacking the cards to pre-
vent a fair hearing. Examples are cited by vari-
ous writers . 1 * * * * * * * * 10

Radio Commentators

News dissemination and interpretation by
radio offers constant opportunity for propa-
ganda by commission and omission, by over-
emphasis and under-emphasis. Because of its
brevity, news-casting may be less “colored” than
more extended reporting, but the speaker’s
voice often conveys marked editorial emphasis.
In this connection remember James Harvey
Robinson’s comment that language is largely
an emotional outlet, “corresponding to various
cooings, growlings, snarls, crowings, and bray-
ings.” The exclamation “Oh” or “Ah” can
reflect approval or disdain. Boake Carter’s
voice is more important than his words. If one
writes out his sentences, they don’t ordinarily
sound harsh; if one remembers the snarl in his
words the effect is different, suggesting the prop-
aganda device of Name Calling. Because of the
size of their audiences and the potentialities of
the human voice, radio news commentators
may shape public opinion much more than
newspaper editorials.

Commentators, like editorial and advertising
writers, seldom are wholly free to say what they

like. Alexander Woollcott, the “Town Crier,”
was relieved of his contract with “Cream of
Wheat” when he refused, in his words, “to keep
quiet about Hitler, Mussolini, or any other
bully, jingo, or lyncher.” What the sponsor
minded was not so much what Woollcott said
about the dictators, but the fact that admirers
of the dictators were boycotting his product.
Had Woollcott praised Hitler and Mussolini
the results doubtless would have been the same.

In an early issue we shall analyze the Ford
Sunday Evening Hour. We suspect John T.
Flynn referred to this program in his recent
speech at the Town Meeting of the Air, u when
he said:

On Sunday evening the family is gathered in the
living room when into their midst float the strains
of music from a great symphony orchestra. In mil-
lions of homes people are listening. This goes on for
half an hour. Then as the strains of some well-loved
old song fade from the air and the family sits around,
thoroughly softened up, there floats into the room
and into the unguarded chambers of their minds the
voice of the propagandist. For five or ten minutes
the carefully planned infection flows. ... It tells of
the romantic saga of business, the great achieve-
ments, the massive wisdom, the matchless courage,
the civilizing alchemy of the great business man as
distinguished from the selfish and narrow ignorance
and wickedness of the Government— the great-souled
business leader compared with the small-minded and
vicious Senator.

10 Ruth Brindze, Not To Be Broadcast (New York: Van-
guard Press, 1937), Minna Kassner and Lucien Zacharoff,
Radio is Censored (New York: American Civil Liberties
Union, 1936), Lillian Hurwitz, Radio Censorship (New

York: American Civil Liberties Union, 1932), Cantril
and Allport, The Psychology of Radio.

11 “Is Our Public Opinion Controlled by Propaganda?”
Bulletin of America's Town Meeting of the Air , Vol. 3,
No. 24, April 18, 1938, pp. 12-13.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. It is well known that every now and then some

groups raise a hue and cry over attacks which, they
claim, are directed against our fundamental insti-

tutions. Some of these groups belong to minority

parties or consist of people with more radical views,
who believe their freedom to speak and assemble

is threatened. Others are made up of the people
who benefit most from the status quo and fear the

changes that are being proposed. Ask a number of

people situated in different circumstances what they
mean when they make the above claims. Write down

their views. From these sum up what the various

groups appear to fear most. Finally, in your own

sober view, write what you think is threatening
America’s basic institutions. Date your work and

repeat it in the midst of the next presidential elec-
tion, securing data from radio and press and inter-
views.

2. Describe what may happen in the next hun-
dred years if propaganda is unchecked, continues to
be more effective, and is not accompanied by educa-
tion in understanding its nature.

3. Visit classrooms, adult groups, public meetings,
listen to radio discussions and talks, and keep track
of the length of time given to views already de-
termined and being propagated and of the length
of time in which facts and invitations are offered to
call out the new, original thinking of listeners or
participants.

4. Rank five radio commentators according to

THE FORD SUNDAY EVENING HOUR

your judgment of their accuracy and adequacy of
facts, impartiality of interpretation, absence of prej-
udice, emotional poise, technique of appeal.

5. If individuals and groups can buy radio time,
sponsor programs, own stations, and thus promote
their own propagandas, should local, state, and fed-
eral governments do likewise? Compare the effect
on the people of the following systems: suppression
of all opinion except the official government propa-

ganda; equal freedom of opinion and facilities for
expression of major points of view including that
of the party in office; equal freedom of opinion and
facilities for expression of major points of view but
none for the party in office.

6. Discuss methods by which radio programs may
be selected, enjoyed, and participated in by all mem-
bers of the family.

Volume I JULY, 1938 Number 10

The Ford Sunday Evening Hour

H ENRY FORD is a man of strong opinions,
which is to say, strong propagandas. More
than a generation ago he had the opinion that
the horse and buggy should be supplanted by
the horseless carriage. Thanks largely to his in-
ventive genius, his energy, his industry, to his
propaganda for the “Tin Lizzies,” and to gov-
ernment cooperation in building roads for
them to run on, his idea was realized. When the
World War came, he had an opinion about
that: it could be ended by the right kind of
propaganda. So he sailed on a “Peace Ship” to
“get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas.”
That propaganda failed. When the United
States entered the war, Ford changed his opin-
ion. He built and sold automotive equipment
and Eagle Boats to “help win the war.”

Ford's derogatory opinion of Jews was an-
other propaganda. It was expressed in anti-
Semitic articles published in his paper. The
Dearborn Independent , on the editorial staff
of which was William J. Cameron, the present
Ford spokesman on the radio program known
as the Ford Sunday Evening Hour. When a
number of libel suits were brought against
Ford as a result of his anti-Jewish propaganda
in The Dearborn Independent , he repudiated
the offensive statements, said they had been
published without his knowledge.

In his talks over the Columbia Broadcasting
System's network, Mr. Cameron has dissemi-
nated so much propaganda on controversial
matters that the Ford Sundav Evening Hour
promises soon to become a live issue within the
broadcasting industry. As we stated in our June
letter, it is the policy of the major networks
not to sell time for propaganda on controversial
public issues. This policy Mr. Cameron has vio-

lated. What C.B.S. will do about it, we do not
know. There may be a lively contest soon be-
tween Mr. Ford and C.B.S. , probably behind
closed doors. It seems hardly possible that any
major network can long continue to permit a
commercial broadcaster to use radio time to
utter opinions or propagandas which arouse
sharp opposition. Some listeners may ask that
another side be heard, obviously an impractical
solution on commercial time; denied this privi-
lege, their resentment against the buyer of time
is turned against the company which sells the
time.

But who is William J. Cameron whose talks
have raised this issue? According to a news-
paper comment (New York Post, April 29,
1938) he dismisses questions about his back-
ground with the phrase “of Scotch descent”;
doesn’t disclose his age, middle name, birth-
place, or names of parents. Before his connec-
tion with Ford’s Dearborn Independent he
wrote editorials for The Detroit Neios; before
that he was a preacher. His radio talks, like
those of Father Coughlin, reveal pulpit ora-
torical methods standardized for certain forms
of sermons.

Mr. Cameron still is much interested in Jews.
He has been president of the Anglo-Saxon Fed-
eration of America, with offices in Detroit,
Michigan; more recently member of the edi-
torial board of its magazine, Destiny. The mem-
bers of this group hold the theory that the in-
habitants of the British Isles are the descend-
ants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. In a
tract, explaining this theory, Mr. Cameron has
written:

We know the divine destiny that Israel was com-
missioned to fulfill. We know that Israel left Pales-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

tine, while the Jews remained. We can trace Israel
out of the East and across Europe to their new set-
tlement in the Isles.

How much Mr. Ford influences Mr. Cam-
eron and how much Mr. Cameron influences
Mr. Ford, we do not know. Undoubtedly each
influences the opinions and the propagandas
of the other. 1

Each year, for thirty-nine Sunday evenings,
since October, 1934, the Ford Motor Company
has sponsored an hour of symphonic music
over the Columbia Broadcasting System. The
programs are “kept within the widest range of
general interest,” (Edsel Ford, October 7, 1934)
and instrumental and vocal soloists appear
with the orchestra. The three products of the
Company are mentioned only once.

Approximately six minutes of the hour are
devoted to talks by Mr. Cameron, who would
be identified as the Company’s public relations
counsel except that the “Ford Motor Company
has no public relations department and em-
ploys no public relations counsel or ‘spokes-
man.’ ” (“Public Relations,” February 14,

IC J37-)'

The purpose of the talks, according to Mr.
Edsel Ford (October 7, 1934), is to “try to bring
variety to these programs by talking over . . .
some topic of general interest, or answering
certain questions. about our company that are
widely asked.” According to Mr. Cameron (Oc-
tober 7, 1934) the talks are designed to assist
the American people in understanding their
various interests by supplying them with ac-
curate information and sound experience. The
Company has “a deep interest and confidence
in American principles, but ... no partisan
purpose or interest whatsoever.” (“Light
Ahead,” September 29, 1935.) The talks are
devoted “to matters of general interest and in-
formation, to the service of common sense and
to the building of a balanced and fearless con-
fidence based on facts.” (“Third Season,” Sep-
tember 20, 1936.) Again, at the close of the
1 935-36 series Mr. Cameron (“End of the Sea-
son,” June 21, 1936) said: “We had no theories
to propagate. We are not professional reform-
ers and have no political axe to grind. Not even
in behalf of capitalism did we offer any special
plea.”

The Talks as Propaganda

An analysis of the talks reveals clear-cut prop-
aganda in many of them. Behind them is the
personality of Henry Ford, his opinions and
convictions. In effect Henry Ford is doing the
talking. His philosophy of individualism, his
type of Americanism, and his trust in a com-
petitive system run all through the talks.

In talk after talk he makes “the American
way” synonymous with the Ford way. Anti-
Ford becomes anti-American. For example, Mr.
Cameron devoted a talk (“Will Hard Times
Come Again?” March 8, 1936) to the taxation
of surpluses. His Company was never men-
tioned; but we were told that the American
way is quite clear upon this point, that taxation
of surpluses is not American. If Mr. Cameron
had stated that the Ford Motor Company does
not want a tax upon corporate surpluses, he
would have been saying baldly what was con-
veyed by indirection. In discussing “Good Will
and Common Sense,” (December 9, 1934) Mr.
Cameron stated that the American doctrine is
that progress is only beginning. He then said:
“A new social plan now being offered us — a
new political talking point — is called Unem-
ployment Insurance. It was invented in coun-
tries that have accepted unemployment and
poverty as final conditions.”

Mr. Ford Is t{ Plain Folks ”

The entire Hour is designed to create a
“plain folks” atmosphere. As noted above, the
musical selections are kept “within the widest
range of general interest.” (Edsel Ford, Octo-
ber 7, 1934.) The lighter works of composers
are often chosen. The Hour ends on a reverent
note with a hymn in which the audience is
asked to join.

Henry Ford is pictured as a common, ordi-
nary American. We are told how he shares the
great American sentiment for McGuffey Read-
ers and old American songs. (W. J. Cameron,
October 7, 1934.) One talk entitled “Just Cir-
culating ’Round” (October 14, 1934) states that
Mr. Ford’s desk is never used by him and that
when last seen it was covered with boxes of
wax dolls. And further:

The only letters he [Mr. Ford] takes time to write
with his own hand are to little boy and girl friends

1 For accounts of Henry Ford’s life the reader is referred
to his autobiography written in collaboration with
Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (New York: Garden
City Publishing Co., Inc., 1922, out of print) and Upton

Sinclair’s The Flivver King (published and distributed by
the author, Station A, Pasadena, California, 25c).

* Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are taken
from Mr. Cameron’s Sunday Evening Hour talks.

THE FORD SUNDAY EVENING HOUR

who are having a birthday. . . . He will nail up a door
for a whole season rather than disturb a robin’s nest;
he has postponed the hay harvest because ground
birds were brooding in the field. . . . Rising at 6 in
the morning, he is often one of the tens of thousands
of Ford men going to work. . . .

Mr. Cameron says that Ford is so little in-
terested in profits per se that “it makes hard-
fisted money-makers wonder why Mr. Ford is
in business at all.” (“The Money Flow,” May
23, 1937.) Ford as a youth working on his first
gasoline engine in the kitchen of an ordinary
two-story double brick house “manipulated the
fly-wheel . . . [while] his young wife poured the
gasoline drop by drop . . . into the intake check
valve.” (“The First Little Shop,” October 20,
1935.) Mr. Ford inspired the verse of Edgar
Guest (“Henry Ford,” March 29, 1936) begin-
ning with the lines:

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

“His greatest personal pleasure— creating more
jobs. His constant goal — higher and yet higher
wages. . . . Faces the future unperturbed, with
faith in American people and American des-
tiny.” (Ibid.)

Since Henry Ford is the Ford Motor Com-
pany, the effect of this use of the Plain Folks
device is to develop the impression that the
Company is in reality nothing more than a
benevolent organization, uninterested in prof-
its, ready to sacrifice an economic advantage for
a humane principle, engaged in manufacturing
automobiles solely to create jobs and raise
wages. The device, thus used, reduces a gigantic
industrial empire to the scale of a company
which is merely the image of a simple, kindly,
generous, democratic man. The Company be-
comes “plain folks, just like us.”

Mr. Ford and “Virtue” Words

Freedom, independence, initiative, inven-
tion, industry, truth, and loyalty are “virtue”
words with which the propagandist seeks to
associate his program.

Consider “freedom.” Mr. Cameron uses it in
the sense of laissez-faire. “Freedom” becomes
the right of indus^y, that is of the Ford Motor
Company, to operate without governmental
interference. “Individualism,” he says, (“Amer-
ican Individualism,” October 28, 1934) is com-
posed of “four elements — Initiative, Inven-
tion, Industry, Independence.” The “anti-in-
dividualism” trend which has appeared in

recent years becomes, therefore, an attack upon
these four “virtues.” Further, since “Initiative,
Invention, Industry, and Independence” are
all inherent in the American character, and
since all of them together compose “Individu-
alism,” an attack upon “Individualism” is an
attack upon the American character and upon
Mr. Ford.

In one talk (“The McGuffey Readers,” March
17, 1935) Company not only becomes a con-
crete example of these “virtues,” but it becomes
the supporter of “truthfulness, industry, con-
sideration for the weak, kindness, respect of
conscience, a firm reliance on the right to

justify itself always and everywhere ” These

were the “tonic iron” that McGuffey in his
Readers “distilled for the soul of young Amer-
ica.” Mr. Cameron then goes on to say: “Many
wish that our present public education might
be made the means of character formation that
it was in McGuffey’s day. We are trying to re-
store that type of teaching at Greenfield Vil-
lage.”

What appears to be a consistent policy of Mr.
Cameron is to make several talks that, taken
separately, seem to have no propaganda intent,
but, when viewed in the light of subsequent
talks, become an important part of the whole.
For instance, he devoted three of his talks in
succession to eulogies of the late King George
V, of the American Constitution, and of
Thomas Alva Edison. (January 26, February 2,
February 9, 1936.) These were followed by a
talk entitled “Nothing Good Is Lost,” (Febru-
ary 16, 1936) a defense of machinery and tech-
nological improvement, and by implication, of
the Ford Motor Company. This policy of Mr.
Cameron might be compared to that of the
“change of pace” of a baseball pitcher, a
method by which the thrower outwits the bat-
ter by giving him a few slow balls and then
throws a fast one. Thus, during the 1935-1936
season Mr. Cameron devoted sixteen of his
thirty-nine talks to such subjects as “American
Sport,” “Thanksgiving,” “Christmas,” “The
Feast of Good Will,” “George Washington,”
“The Light of Easter,” and “Mother’s Day.”
Some of these were by no means devoid of
propaganda, but they may be distinguished
from another group of talks un “Buildings and
Motors,” “Who Owns the United States?”
“Who Gets The Income?” and “Business and
Recovery” which were largely propaganda. A
talk on “American Sport” (October 6, 1935)

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

developed into a study of its competitive na-
ture; and from this the deduction was drawn
that “our American sport contests have a lesson
for all statesmen inoculated with foreign the-
ories.”

By devoting nearly half his talks to subjects
that do not on the surface contain propaganda,
Mr. Cameron builds up our “receptivity’' and
lowers our “resistance” to talks which contain
propaganda.

Heroes and Villains

Name Calling is frequently implied or used
by Mr. Cameron when he talks about writers
and politicians. Just as production engineers
are the “heroes” of his discourses, writers and
politicians are the “villains.” In discussing cer-
tain types of writers he applies to them the label
of “the so-called intelligentsia” and says (“Lib-
eral Youth,” October 18, 1936):

Fostering itself within itself as most ingrowing
aberrations do, itself writing books about itself for
itself to read, delivering lectures to itself, drawing
its bread ration from the system it pretends to de-
spise, and seriously believing its own inflation to be
substantial power, it presents a clear-cut pathological
condition.

In a talk entitled “The ‘Speed Up’ ” (Novem-
ber 7, 1937) h e ma de the point that magazine
articles critical of the factory assembly line and
the “speed up” are usually written by those
who are obviously never meant for mechanical
work, certainly not for factory work. In this

8 Christy Borth, special assignment writer for the Detroit
Free Press, wrote “Americana: On the Line” ( The Read-
er’s Digest, July, 1937) in reply to Gene Richard’s “Time

same talk Mr. Cameron recommended an ar-
ticle in The Reader’s Digest 1 2 3 for the “real, in-
side story” of the assembly line.

But if adversely critical writers are bad, poli-
ticians are worse. For instance:

Public life with its deplorable standards; oaths of
office notoriously violated; rampant disorders abet-
ted and protected by political power; public ut-
terances scandalously unreliable — these are infi-
nitely more costly to the nation than legal crime.
We have witnessed not merely a departure from
principles of rectitude in public life, but a shocking
ignorance that anything like principle exists. What
formerly was concealed for shame, now passes for
bad political cleverness. (“For Character and Coun-
try/' March 21, 1937.)

Government had nothing to do with the
bringing of the motor and aviation age into
being, according to Mr. Cameron. (“Horse and
Buggy Age,” October 25, 1936.) The vast pro-
gram of public highways which made possible
the utilization of the automobile he does not
mention. He does not allude to government
regulations to safeguard citizens against auto-
mobile accidents nor to the need for increased
government expenditures to combat types of
crimes made more easily possible by the* auto-
mobile.

In summary, Mr. Cameron’s talks stack the
cards in favor of the Ford Motor Company
and against writers, government officials, labor
leaders, and others who do not approve of Ford
policies. This obviously is what he is paid to
do. He does it effectively.

Clock No. 1135284” ( The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1937
and The Reader’s Digest, May, 1937).

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. Discuss the following assumption and its prev-
alence: “All that is needed to bring peace and order,
either internationally or between employers and em-
ployes, is goodwill among men. There is no basic
difference between opponents in either field, but
ill will nourished by agitation and propaganda.”

2. Speakers frequently use the term “an ordinary
American.” Discuss him, try to understand him, and
describe him realistically.

3. American business has advanced with leaps and
bounds in its ability to produce a variety of goods
on an immense scale. This rapid advance is due
largely to two factors, both of which involve careful
and accurate thinking: excellent organization for
economical mass production and distribution, and

the use of constantly improved inventions, ma-
chinery, and scientific discoveries, particularly in
physics, chemistry, and electricity. Discuss the effect
of these factors on our attitude toward business
methods, business theories and propaganda.

4. It is recommended that the group purchase and
study together Technological Trends and National
Policy (Washington, D.C.: United States Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1937, pp. 388, $1.00), a report
of the Subcommittee on Technology to the Na-
tional Resources Committee. In a forceful and most
readable manner the report shows some of the social
aspects of technical developments, the relationship
between science and technology, and technical de-
velopments in various fields.

Volume I

AUGUST, 1938

Number 11

The Public Relations Counsel
and Propaganda

AS FAR as Hollywood is concerned, all news-
ii papermen are drunkards, crime doesn’t
pay, virtue always triumphs, and press agents,
while they mean well, of course, somehow can-
not realize until the very last reel that Mona
Mari, the glamorous movie star, would rather
have love than money, or even her career. It’s
had enough when they ask Miss Mari to bathe
in milk, wear overalls, and keep trained lions
as pets — all in the interest of publicity. When
they smash her engagement by concocting an
imaginary romance with her leading man that
makes page one in the New York Times , how-
ever — well, that is just too much. “Is nothing
sacred to you?” Miss Mari storms. “Will you
stop at nothing to get another story into the
papers?” And, tearing her contract to confetti,
she hurtles from the press agent’s office, while
the agent, sputtering in amazement, leaps for
the nearest telephone.

Now, there may be press agents like that; in
fact, there probably are — in Hollywood, where
Marlene Dietrich wears pants, Garbo talks only
to Leopold Stokowski, people are engaged for
the morning papers, and divorced for the
afternoons. Press agents there seem to stay up
all night thinking of Samuel Goldwynisms to
put in Samuel Goldwyn’s mouth; plans are pro-
posed for plastering the pyramids of Egypt with
posters.

Nevertheless, it would hardly be too much
to say that, on the whole, the average press
agent resembles the Hollywood stereotype as
closely as the average newspaperman resembles
the wild but ah! so brilliant movie reporter.
He doesn’t wear loud-checked suits. He doesn’t
talk in exclamation points. He doesn’t shout
“Wadcla story! Wadda story!” If he’s doing
publicity for an industrial corporation, he
probably refers to himself as Public Relations
Director or Vice-president in Charge of Public
Relations; has an elaborate office; and helps to
shape the corporation’s even- policv. If he’s in
business for himself, then he probably uses the
imposing title, Counsel on Public Relations.

In spite of the movies, he isn’t particularly
worried about grabbing space in the papers.
He doesn’t want so much to attract public at-
tention; he wants rather to mold the public’s
mind. And newspaper publicity is just one tool
among many whereby he can do this. (There
are times, in fact, when the public relations
counsel may even decide that newspaper pub-
licity is undesirable. For example, Alva Johns-
ton in his article, “Jimmy’s Got It,” tells how
George Washington Hill, of the American To-
bacco Company, was advised by Ivy Lee and
T. J. Ross that should he decide to have him-
self insured for $10,000,000, as Theodore M.
Riehle, the insurance agent, had suggested, it
would be unwise from the standpoint of public
relations to publicize the fact. Investors, they
said, might conclude that he was in bad health.)

The public relations counsel knows the value
of concealing his own motives, the motives of
his clients, and, if need be, even the identity
of his clients. For, with few exceptions, those
motives are never altruistic. It is the rare organ-
ization, indeed, that is willing to spend as much
as $500,000 in one year for public relations (and
even bigger sums have been spent) just from
an over-powering sense of civic duty. On the
other hand, if special pleading is recognized
for what it really is, then it loses much of its
effect. So the public relations counsel masks
his special pleading in luscious, mouth-filling
virtue words, Glittering Generalities. And he
masks the identity of his clients by creating an
organization, with some high-sounding name,
to carry on the propaganda.

“Institutes” and “ Foundations ”

Generally, he prefers to create an institute
or foundation. There is something about the
very words “institute” and “foundation” that
seems almost to mesmerize the American peo-
ple. They conjure up visions of Airowsmith :
white-tiled laboratories, serious, young scien-
tists, microscopes, guinea-pigs — giving their
all for humanity. They make the public think

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie
Foundation, the Brookings Institution, all the
other institutes and foundations that have done
so much to further the quest for knowledge.
Thus, by creating an “institute” or “founda-
tion,” the public relations counsel transfers
the prestige of those devoted to public service
to the one he would use to achieve a private
end — the Transfer device.

The public relations counsel establishes the
American Economic Foundation, the Edison
Electric Institute, the Radio Institute of the
Audible Arts, the Temperature Research Foun-
dation, the Cleanliness Institute, the Asphalt
Roofing and Shingle Institute, and countless
others. Each, he tells us, has been created in
our interests; each wants only to serve us. Just
like the Rockefeller Foundation; just like the
Brookings Institution.

A high-sounding name, however, is not
enough. A high-sounding board of directors is
also needed: leaders in public life, well-known
business men, educators, scientists. These can
always be found. Some will lend their names
from sincere conviction. George Sylvester Vier-
eck, for example, has often lent not only his
name but even his time and talents and money
to pro-German organizations, for Mr. Viereck
has been intensely pro-German since his college
days, and even during the World War hysteria,
when pro-German sympathies meant persecu-
tion. Similarly, Carl Crow and Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr., who are helping Carl Byoir Sc
Associates, Inc. with its pro-China campaign,
could hardly be suspected of acting from any
but the highest motives. Nevertheless, there are
those only too ready to serve as directors of any
propaganda organization which will pay them
enough. And there are others who, although
they receive no money, hope for another kind
of compensation — publicity, for example, or
special favors.

America’s outstanding exponent of the in-
stitute has long been Edward L. Bernays; in
fact, he might even be credited with inventing
this type of institute. Some time ago, before the
World War and before the facts of life had
achieved their present esteem, Richard Ben-
nett, the actor, decided to produce Brieux’s
play, Damaged Goods. He was afraid, however,
that his show might be raided by the police;
and to prevent this, he retained Mr. Bernays as
public relations counsel. Mr. Bernays, who
then was the editor of the Dietetic Health

Gazette and the Medical Review of Reviews ,
organized the Sociological Fund and for it so-
licited members from New York’s 400. The
avowed purpose of the organization was to
fight venereal disease through education. Its
real purpose was to make the public receptive
to Brieux’s play.

Apparently the plan worked: the police
didn’t touch Damaged Goods ; and Mr. Bernays
was convinced that his plan really had poten-
tialities. The result is that Mr. Bernays has
since created more institutes, funds, institu-
tions, and foundations than Rockefeller, Car-
negie, and Filene together. Typical of them
was the Temperature Research Foundation. Its
stated purpose was “to disseminate impartial,
scientific information concerning the latest de-
velopments in temperature control as they af-
fect the health, leisure, happiness, and economy
of the American people.” A minor purpose —
so minor that rarely did Mr. Bernays remember
even to mention it — was to boost the sales
of Kelvinator refrigerators, air-conditioning
units, and electric stoves.

Another type of organization that the coun-
sel on public relations likes to establish is the
citizens’ committee. Nothing is more basic to
the democratic idea than is the right of like-
minded citizens to band together in order to
further their views. It was such committees —
the Committees on Correspondence — which
helped start the American Revolution.

However, it takes organizational ability,
time, and, most important of all, money to
establish a citizens’ committee. The public re-
lations counsel, who is well-paid by his clients,
has all three. What is more, prominent spon-
sors can just as easily be lined up for a com-
mittee as for an institute, and for exactly the
same reasons. So we find that John Price Jones
had an energetic finger in the formation of the
Citizens’ National Committee, which received
so much publicity in the papers last year.

Now the question arises: how does the pub-
lic relations counsel get his ideas before the
public? Naturally, he does not want to use ad-
vertising: the advertisement is obvious special
pleading, and obvious special pleading, as has
already been noted, is relatively ineffectual.
Consequently, the public relations counsel at-
tempts to slip his propaganda into the press as
news, features, or editorials; into the newsreels
under the same guise; into the magazines as
unbiased articles, written by disinterested au-

PUBLIC RELATIONS COUNSEL AND PROPAGANDA

charities; into the ether as sustaining radio pro-
grams; and into the movies.

His simplest, though not in any sense his
most potent, technique is merely to print bro-
chures and pamphlets and to distribute them,
under the name of his institute, among the
nation’s “leaders of public opinion.” These
are the public officials in every community, the
leading business men, bankers, educators, civic
leaders, and newspaper editors, who have the
respect of their fellow citizens, and whose opin-
ions carry weight. No doubt you have received
many of these publications. They come from
the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Edi-
son Electric Institute, the National Association
of Manufacturers, and hundreds of similar or-
ganizations. Not long ago the Sutton News Serv-
ice was sending them out for the Japanese
Chamber of Commerce to combat the boycott
of Japanese goods. (In 1933, the Farm Equip-
ment Institute retained three college pro-
fessors to answer the charges of two govern-
ment agencies that prices of farm machinery
were too high. A report was prepared by the
professors; the American Society of Agricul-
tural Engineers, of which they were all mem-
bers, agreed to sponsor it. And the very govern-
ment agencies that had attacked the farm
equipment industry reprinted excerpts from
the professors’ report and circulated them
widely — completely unaware that, instead of
being an unbiased, objective study, it was paid
[if well disguised] propaganda against them-
selves.)

T he Newspaper Release

The most common technique is the newspa-
per release (newspapermen call them “hand-
outs,” but the counsel on public relations ab-
hors that word). These are mimeographed
articles, written in newspaper style, which, the
public relations counsel is convinced, have news
value. Sometimes they have. They may, for ex-
ample, describe an important and news-worthy
contribution to science and industry that has
recently been made by the press agent’s client.
Or again, the client’s employes may have gone
on strike; their union naturally has made de-
mands and charges; the newspaper release will
outline the company’s defense.

On the whole, however, these newspaper re-
leases are simply advertisements written as
news. They are printed either because the news-
paper does not hire enough reporters and is,

therefore, short of copy, or else because the
publisher thinks he will be able to get advertis-
ing from the company if his paper runs its
propaganda.

Occasionally, when his client has done noth-
ing of news-interest and he wants to get more
space in the papers than he can with releases
that are blatant advertising, the public rela-
tions counsel will make news. He may stage
luncheons, dinners, or conferences, at which
prominent men will speak. (The speakers, it
goes without saying, will always express the
very ideas that he wants to pound into the
public’s mind.) He may hold contests, like the
soap-sculpture contest of the Cleanliness Insti-
tute; he may arrange for the award of scholar-
ships to worthy high school graduates; he may
arrange such events as the “Golden Jubilee of
Light,” at which Thomas Edison reenacted the
invention of the incandescent lamp.

New refinements in the press agent’s tech-
nique are the “news bureaus.” These masque-
rade, though not always with success, as regular
news agencies like the Associated Press, the
United Press, and the International News Serv-
ice. They distribute news, pictures, features,
and editorials without charge to any paper that
would rather save on its editorial budget than
print legitimate news. One such organization
is Six Star Service, maintained by the National
Association of Manufacturers. Among its prod-
ucts is the feature “Uncle Abner Says.” Another
is the Health News Service, which supplies
news of developments in the field of public
health — in order to boost the consumption of
milk. Still another is the Fashion Worth News,
which supplies news of fashions — in order to
boost the sale of Cluett Peabody Co. shirts. The
Foremost Feature Service sends eleven or twelve
news pictures each week to any paper that
wants them, but three or four of the pictures
are really disguised propaganda.

And do you read the “Letters to the Editor”
column in your paper? Surely there can’t be
propaganda there: just letters from readers
with an idea. Yet, according to Walter Win-
chell, an investigation by New York City edi-
tors recently showed that half of the letters they
received had originated in one publicity office.
And the American Newspaper Publishers Asso-
ciation has frequently pointed out to its mem-
bers the amazing similarity between letters that
supposedly have been written by several dif-
ferent people.

6 4

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

Pulchritude and Propaganda

Pick up your newspaper again. Scattered
through it are pictures of pretty girls with
slender ankles, shapely legs. Most of them are
skimpily dressed — in bathing suits, perhaps —
and they are swimming, playing tennis, surf-
board riding, dancing at (the captions are care-
ful to mention) Spring Lake, N. J.; Sun Valley,
Idaho; Old Point Comfort, Va.; Miami and
Miami Beach, Fla. Most of those girls are pro-
fessional actresses. Many of them were posed
for the photographs by Carl Byoir, Steve Han-
nagan, or Hamilton Wright.

If you want to see them again, drop into your
neighborhood movie house. They’ll be in the
newsreels, swimming, playing tennis, surf-
board riding, etc., again to publicize Spring
Lake, N. J., Sun Valley, Idaho, etc.

The ether is just as cluttered with propa-
ganda as the press. Often, radio broadcasters
are unable to sell time during the morning
hours, and they are therefore forced to put on
sustaining programs. These cost money, and
they bring no revenue. So the public relations
counsel prepares talks, has them mimeo-
graphed, and sends them free of charge to radio
stations. Now the station does not have to
spend money on script-writers. It can have its
announcer read the prepared talk. Occasion-
ally, the public relations counsel may hire
some one to write dramatic sketches, hire actors
to present them, and have the show recorded.
He will then mail out the records, and the
radio stations will be able to put these interest-
ing dramatic programs on the air — for nothing.

One such recorded program is the “American

Family Robinson,” distributed by the National
Association of Manufacturers. More than 150
radio stations are said to use it. Another is
George E. Sokolsky’s weekly review of the news,
also distributed by the N.A.M.

It is somewhat more difficult to stuff the na-
tional magazines with propaganda. Their
standards are too high; and besides, most of
their articles either come from staff reporters
or are written on assignment. If the public re-
lations counsel succeeds in hiring some one
who is capable enough to write articles that
national magazines will buy, he is pretty lucky.
Otherwise he will have to depend on selling
the magazine editors on ideas for articles, hop-
ing that whoever is assigned to write them will
have the right point of view.

This article is not intended to indict the
business of public relations. Our society is run
by public opinion; daily, institutions clash with
institutions, and ideas with ideas, for public
favor. In this war of propagandas, as the Insti-
tute has pointed out in previous letters, we all
participate. What other people do poorly, the
public relations counsel does well. If his meth-
ods seem rather shoddy, at times — and they
do — the fault lies not so much with him as
with the conditions that make those methods
efficacious: the willingness of the press and ra-
dio to cooperate with the public relations coun-
sel, the readiness of the average man or woman
to get on the band wagon, the fact that we
often let our biases and prejudices, rather than
our minds, think for us.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. The public relations counsel can work only
with the public as it is. This means with its preva-
lent fears and desires, hopes, ideals, and wishes.
Make a list of the fears, desires, and ideals present
in your group, which could be utilized by public
relations counsels. Expand this list to include other
people in your community. Expand it to include
people in other communities.

2. There is a growing suspicion that, disguised in
all kinds of forms, propaganda is being “put over”
on the public. This illustrates a dilemma faced by
all serious and conscientious students of propa-
ganda. To be innocent and naively ignorant in the
understanding of propaganda is not desirable. But
it is also not desirable to be unable to enjoy a news-

paper or magazine, a movie or radio program with-
out “smelling a rat” around the corner. The un-
certainty in which most of us find ourselves demands
a conscious and careful effort to find a position
somewhere between these two extremes. Discuss the
situation, and then write a page of advice for a high
school student showing him how to see the situation
clearly. In other words, change uncertainty into
some kind of trustworthy testing for newsreels, mag-
azine articles, radio programs, newspaper editorials,
news, and feature articles.

3. Make a thorough study of the various aspects
of peace propaganda. Assign a different national
peace organization to each member of the group or
to committees of three or four members. The organ-

PROPAGANDA: SOME ILLUSTRATIONS

izations, their programs, plans, purposes, and prop-
aganda should be studied carefully. Bring the reports
together. Discuss the extent to which the activities
of the peace organizations are propaganda, educa-
tion, or both. Evaluate the effects of peace propa-
ganda and peace education in promoting peace,
without losing sight of the extent and the duration
of these effects. Write a critical commentary on the
value of propaganda in promoting peace.

4. Has our Federal Government any right to dis-
seminate propaganda within the borders of the
United States? 1 Such activities are paid for by taxes
collected alike from citizens who agree and disagree
with the Government. Is it right to use the money
of those who disagree to spread propaganda which
they believe is false or for a wrong purpose? Do our
laws permit non-governmental groups to spread true
or false propaganda about the Federal Government
and its officers? Has the Federal Government the
right or the obligation to spread what it believes is
true propaganda about itself, its plans, purposes,
and theories?

5. Consider an actual public relations campaign

1 Note to Discussion Leader: In considering these ques-
tions, try to discuss them in the abstract first; it will then
be easier and more fruitful to take concrete illustrations.

for, let us say, better street lights. How would you
plan the program? To which groups would you ap-
peal? What appeals would you make? Why? How
would you go about getting your propaganda into
the newspapers? Onto radio programs? What about
word-of-mouth propaganda? Could you create that?
Flow? Is there any way in which you could drama-
tize the need for better street lighting, first in order
to get your propaganda into the papers, and second
to crystallize public opinion? How could you im-
press upon your City Council the extent of the
demand for better street lighting? Would commit-
tees of prominent citizens help? Delegations? Peti-
tions? How could you arrange these? How would
you finance the program?

6. Pick up your morning paper and study the
stories on the front page. How did the newspaper
get them? Did the newspaper send out a reporter
to cover the story? If so, how did the paper know
that it was going to happen? Was the story written
from a “handout” (i.e., an account of the event pre-
pared at the request of some one vitally interested
in the event)? In that case, do you think it is the
whole story? When a paper says, “It was learned
...” or “According to reliable information . . . ”
just what does it mean? Obviously some one must
have told the paper. Why isn’t his name given?

Volume I SEPTEMBER, 1938 Number 12

Propaganda: Some Illustrations

In Washington, Robert M. La-
Kickback Follette’s committee on civil lib-
erties has been putting together,
piece by piece, the story of Little Steel's cam-
paign to smash the C.I.O. From letters, and
from sworn testimony, Mr. LaFollette’s Senate
committee has shown how Little Steel attempted
to influence the press of Alabama; how it hired
George E. Sokolsky, the newspaper columnist,
to address huge anti-union meetings; how, with
the help of the National Association of Manu-
facturers, it actually staged the meetings, yet
managed to conceal the fact.

Little Steel’s campaign, it would appear, fol-
lowed the old, though still potent formula de-
scribed in the Institute’s last monthly letter.
“Civic groups” were organized. “Names” were
bought. Pamphlets and brochures were issued.
The press was flooded with handouts and
pictures.

In charge of some of these activities was Hill
and Knowlton, the public relations firm of
Cleveland and New York.

If Hill and Knowlton was in any way embar-
rassed by the Senate committee’s revelations,
the reason, perhaps, is that it neglected to prac-
tice what its senior partner, John W. Hill, so
eloquently preaches. Last year, Tom M. Gird-
ler, chairman of the board of the Republic Steel
Corporation, showed the Senate Post Office
Committee some photographs of “the weapons
of war taken from these C.I.O. forces by the
public authorities.” Last month the LaFollette
committee was informed that Mr. Girdler had
really been showing the Senate photographs
of some one’s private gun collection. Mr. La-
Follette’s committee learned further that Mr.
Girdler had gotten the photos from Hill and
Knowlton.

This must have caused Hill and Knowlton to

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

recall, with regret, Mr. Hill’s address before the
Office Equipment Manufacturers’ Institute at
Toronto, Canada, last June. “The job of public
relations,” said Mr. Hill sagely, “is not for the
amateur. In the first place, he is likely to exag-
gerate; in the second place, he so stretches his
bias that it becomes an untruth.

“In public relations there is never any value
in an untruth. The public will sense it sooner
or later, and an unpleasant boomerang will be
at work.”

Mr. Sokolsky wasn’t particularly flustered by
the LaFollette committee’s disclosure that Hill
and Knowlton and the National Association of
Manufacturers had paid him more than $28,000
in eighteen months to denounce the C.I.O.; but
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which runs Mr.
Sokolsky ’s column, would just as soon that you
didn’t mention the whole affair. The Post-
Gazette doesn’t. In fact, it deleted all references
to Mr. Sokolsky from the Associated Press story
about the LaFollette committee’s hearings. In
this respect the Post-Gazette revealed a squeam-
ishness discernible in many newspapers, for few
papers identified Mr. Sokolsky with his news-
paper column. This may have been due to two
rather curious unwritten newspaper laws: first,
that a newspaper seldom mentions another
newspaper in an embarrassing editorial connec-
tion, and, second, that a journalist as a news-
paper man is not “news.”

Frankly, we don’t know whether Republic
Steel’s attempt to influence the Alabama press
was successful or not. We don’t think anyone
does. The New York Post, ready to believe the
worst, apparently thinks that it was. At least,
this is what it said last month:

PROBE REVEALS
REPUBLIC STEEL
SWAY OF PRESS

GOT “CORRECT” VIEW
OF CANTON TERROR IN
ALABAMA PAPERS

The Birmingham Age-Herald, on the other
hand, seems just as certain that Republic’s ef-
forts were futile. Here is what the Age-Herald
said:

VAIN ATTEMPTS TO
INFLUENCE PRESS
OF CITY CHARGED

The Age-Herald buttressed this headline by
quoting from the letter of W. H. Oldham, in
which the district manager for Republic Steel
declared that his call upon Victor H. Hanson,
editor of the Age-Herald, had not done “any
good.” The New York Post did not quote this
letter, but it did quote another by Kenneth D.
Mann, another official of a Republic subsidiary,
which declared: “I have been successful, I be-
lieve, in changing their [the Birmingham Post's ]
editorial policy to one more favorable to us.”
Naturally, there was no mention of Mr. Mann’s
assertion in the Age-Herald . 1

As long as we are on the sub-
Headlines ject of newspaper headlines, we
should like to comment on sev-
eral that appeared in the papers about the
Democratic primaries in Arkansas, Ohio, and
Idaho last month. It has often been claimed by
critics of the American press that newspapers
are likely to put highly colored headlines on
even the most unbiased stories; and, if some of
the heads that we saw last month are repre-
sentative, that is all too painfully true. In the
New Deal papers, the primaries were New Deal
victories; in the anti-New Deal papers, they
were calamitous defeats. The Communists’ Da ily
Worker, more New Deal than even the Presi-
dent himself, announced:

OHIO REJECTS ‘TEAR GAS’

DAVEY: NEW DEAL WINS
3-1 VICTORY IN PRIMARIES

1 Editor’s Note: A letter from Hill and Knowlton,
protesting that we have misrepresented its activities in
behalf of Republic Steel, was received by the Institute
shortly before this volume went to press. Hill and Knowl-
ton’s protest is based primarily upon an interpretation
of testimony before the LaFollette committee that dif-
fers sharply from ours. We did make one error— and
we acknowledge it herewith. We should not have indi-
cated that Hill and Knowlton helped to organize “civic
groups.” Actually, it was the National Association of
Manufacturers which helped to form them. Hill and
Knowlton, so far as can be discovered, took no part in

this activity, even though it would have been quite ethi-
cal for the firm to have done so.

We have offered to print excerpts from Hill and
Knowl ton’s letter. The firm particularly resents our in-
terpretation of testimony by T. M. Girdler, S. Russell
Gibboney, and others regarding photographs that were
shown to members of the Senate Post Office Committee.
We regard our interpretation as correct. If, however,
we have done any injustice to Hill and Knowlton, even
by implication, we sincerely wish to give the firm ade-
quate opportunity to state its position.

PROPAGANDA: SOME ILLUSTRATIONS

The anti-New Deal Chicago Daily Tribune:

DEFEAT OF IDAHO
YES MAN STUNS
ROOSEVELT AIDS

The pro-New Deal Chicago Daily Times:
LATEST FIGURES
SHOW GAINS BY
2 NEW DEALERS

The anti-New Deal Los Angeles Times:

POPE'S DEFEAT
IN IDAHO JOLT
TO NEW DEAL

The pro-New Deal New York Post:

3 NEW DEALERS WIN

And the Washington Daily News, which, in
keeping with the regular Scripps-Howard prac-
tice, generally damns the New Deal with faint
praise:

NEW DEAL IS 1 DOWN

IN ITS SENATE PURGE

ton

Like all Communist papers, the
Nightmare Sunday Worker is class-angled
from cover to cover. Even the
comics are stuffed with propaganda. The wom-
en’s page often reads like the Communist Mani-
festo, and there are times when the casual reader
can’t tell whether he is looking at the sports’
column or the editorial page.

Last month, when the Hawaii Clipper plum-
meted into the Pacific somewhere between
Guam and Manila, the Sunday Worker saw the
class-angle right away. The Worker hates Japan.
Ever since the war in China began, it has out-
done even the Hearst press at its worst in shout-
ing, “Yellow Perill” So the Worker decided to
see Nippon’s fine hand in the crash of the
Hawaii Clipper. Over half of page one it spread
the story that, according to “a rumor” in Wash-
ington, the Clipper had been “shot down by
Japanese.” In support of this fantastic tale, it
cited the alleged fact that Japan was jealous of
“America’s successful development of trans-
pacific communication.”

See? That proves it.

ton

All over the country during the
Whispers past few months the story has
been spreading by word of
mouth: “Chesterfield gives money to Nazi Ger-
many.” Ask the rumor-mongers how they know

and they will solemnly assure you that “Walter
Winchell told about it the other night in his
radio broadcast.” Or else they will quote Boake
Carter. “I heard it with my own ears,” they will
sometimes add.

The story is untrue. Neither Winchell nor
Carter has ever said— over the air or any place
else — that Chesterfield supports the N azi regime,
and there is absolutely no reason to suppose
that it does. Still, the rumor continues to grow.
Last month, it had reached such proportions
that Liggett and Myers decided that something
must be done to scotch it, and done soon. On
thousands of cigar store-fronts was plastered the
notice that Chesterfield would pay $25,000 re-
ward for information concerning the source of
the rumors.

Flow the whispering-campaign began is some-
thing that nobody knows. Liggett and Myers
would like to find out because this is not the
first time, and it probably will not be the last,
that Chesterfield has been the victim of rumor-
mongers. About four years ago, for example, the
whisperers had it that lepers were employed in
the Liggett and Myers factory.

Interested, the New York World-Telegram
made an investigation of rumors, and it dis-
covered that while many of them seem to arise
spontaneously, others are deliberately created
by high-pressure organizations, which have
“Whispers for Sale.” Many of these organiza-
tions were said to employ house-to-house can-
vassers, whose job it was to intersperse their
sales-talk with juicy bits of gossip that house-
wives would be likely to repeat to their hus-
bands, their neighbors, and friends. The cost of
this service was $ 1 5 per canvasser per day.

Other groups specialized in anti-labor whis-
pers. An employer who desired to disrupt the
union in his factory would hire their men to
work side by side with his regular employes.
After gaining their confidence, the professional
rumor-mongers would pump the workers full
of slanderous tales about the union officials.

The whispering campaigns were fairly cheap,
the World-Telegram said, and they were highly
effective.

con

Many an irate book critic
"Simply has complained about the

Breathtaking" knack that some publishers

seem to have for twisting
even the most damning reviews into fulsome
praise of their books. The critic will say: “The

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

author's ignorance of his subject is simply
breathtaking.” And two or three days later, the
ads will quote him as having written: ‘‘Simply
breathtakingl”

The American Legion Monthly did some-
thing like that last month with the New York
Herald-Tribune's editorial on Professor Wil-
liam Gellermann’s study of the Legion. The
Herald-Tribune's editorial denounced the Le-
gion for its advocacy of the bonus, charged its
officials with failure to protect civil liberties,
and criticized the Legion posts which support
vigilante groups. In the final paragraph, how-
ever, it praised the Legion's rank and file. Sur-
prising though it may seem, the American Le-
gion Monthly cited this editorial to defend the
Legion against Professor Gellermann’s attack.
It simply disregarded the body of the editorial,
and quoted the final paragraph.

c Gn

One interesting fact about Repre-
Probe sentative Dies' committee on “un-

American” activities is that although
many individuals and groups have been labeled
“fascist” or “communist,” at no time has any-
thing like a clear-cut definition of fascism or
communism been given. These are the “bad”
names right now. If they can be pinned on the
National Labor Relations Board, the Works
Progress Administration, Labor Secretary Per-
kins, Mr. or Mrs. Roosevelt, President Mac-
Cracken, of Vassar, or anyone of a thousand
individuals or groups and if the name calling
gets enough publicity, those individuals and
groups are automatically discredited. That is,
they are automatically discredited among people
who do not seek definitions of terms. If Martin
Dies had been a theologian in the Middle Ages,
he should have felt at home. Anybody he didn’t
like he would have called a “heretic,” and that
would have been that.

Speaking of Name Calling, “purge” is vying
with both “communist” and “fascist” as a “bad”

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. It is easy to misinterpret some one’s views by
quoting him in a certain way. Discuss the rules the
group would adopt to insure fair play in quoting
speakers and writers.

2. In any acute situation on which we are likely to
feel rather strongly and to take sides, we naturally

name. Connotation: anyone from the President
down who suggests that a political opponent be
defeated is guilty of a “purge”; that is, guilty of
being a dictator even though he practices the
age old American political custom of campaign-
ing for the defeat of opponents. “Purge” means
“Hitler, Stalin, secret trials, executions.” Its use
ties in nicely with the use of “fascist” and
“communist” at the hearings before the Special
House Committee to Investigate Un-American
Activities in the United States.

acw

When a university confers an
Mutual honorary degree upon a person,

Approval that is a mark of the university’s

approval of that individual; and
the person’s acceptance of the degree indicates
on his part approval of the university. Mutual
approval thus is transferred by honorary de-
grees, by government decorations, by honors,
medals, and citations of various sorts. Here we
have propaganda acts.

A good recent example was the conferring
upon Henry Ford on his seventy-fifth birthday
of the award of the Grand Cross of the German
Eagle, and his acceptance of same. Nazi ap-
proval of Ford and reciprocal approval of the
Nazis by Ford must have been embarrassing to
newspapers that have been pressing against the
Nazis. Some, like the New York Times, made
little reference to the decoration, featured in-
stead Ford’s love for the dear old McGuffey
Readers.

In Detroit itself the Free Press gave the story
of the Ford birthday celebration, before which
the Nazi decoration was presented, a five-col-
umn spread on page one and more than six
columns on page two. The story of the Nazi
decoration got exactly two sentences at the end
of all these columns. The Detroit News was not
so shy. It featured a three-column photograph
of the presentation of Hitler’s birthday gift to
the automobile magnate.

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

wish to have precise information. A typical situation
of this kind is a labor dispute or a strike. Make a list
of the questions which you would like your news-
paper to answer in reporting a strike. Then read
half a dozen local papers when the next important
strike occurs and grade them according to your list.

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

3. Another interesting experiment to test what
one might term the “internal integrity” of a news-
paper is to read a news account carefully and see if
the headlines give, in your judgment, an accurate
and concise statement of the most important points
in the article. Compare the headlines of different
papers. Do they emphasize different aspects of the
same story? How widely do the stories diverge in
their recountals of the same event? Have important

questions about the event been left unanswered? Do
you think it was possible to get these answers?

4. It is easy to accuse others of Name Calling. We
forget that most of us frequently use this propaganda
device ourselves. Each member of the group should
carry a notebook or stiff card with him and con-
scientiously attempt to check himself every time he
uses “good” or “bad” names by writing them down.
Discuss and define these. Why do we use them?

MAY 16 , 1938

SPECIAL LETTER ON

The Channels of Communication

If any of the correspondents
Nightshirt who accompanied the Presi-
dent to Warm Springs, Geor-
gia, on his vacation there, had actually been in
bed at 12:45 o’clock in the morning of March
31, it’s just within the realm of possibility that
Marvin McIntyre, the President’s secretary,
might have bothered to awaken them; and
there would, then, have been some wisp of truth
in the stories which several of them wrote about
the President’s letter on the reorganization
bill.

However . . . they were all just as wide-awake
as Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

No doubt, you remember the stories: It’s well
after midnight. At Curtis Hall, near the Presi-
dent’s ‘‘Little White House,” the correspond-
ents have already turned in for the night. Sud-
denly, in bursts Mr. McIntyre. He routs the
correspondents from bed, thrusts mimeo-
graphed (or typewritten?) copies of the Presi-
dent's letter into their hands. Sleepy-eyed, the
correspondents read: ‘‘I have no inclination to
be a dictator. ...”

The United Press told about it thus:

WARM SPRINGS, March 31 (UP). -White House
attaches routed newspaper correspondents . . . from
bed early today . . .

The New York Sun:

WARM SPRINGS, March 31.— Attaches of the
White House shook newspaper correspondents into
wakefulness in their beds here at 1 A. M. today . . .

The Associated Press:

. . . Correspondents, who accompanied the Presi-

dent to Warm Springs, were aroused . . . well after
midnight . . .

The correspondents were awakened by the
President himself, announced Phelps Adams,
of the Sun. The President had to get up from
bed at midnight to release the letter, said an
editorial in the New York Herald Tribune. A
phrase was born: ‘‘The President’s nightshirt
party.”

And now for the facts:

Mr. McIntyre didn’t shake any of the corre-
spondents into wakefulness. He didn’t have to,
because, as we’ve already remarked, none of the
correspondents was asleep. The President dis-
cussed the advisability of releasing the letter at
dinner with his aides; he reached his decision
at 8:30 p.m. or thereabouts; was in bed at 10
p.m.; and stayed in bed until the next morning.
Grace Tulley, of the White House staff, and
Mr. McIntyre were delayed in getting the letter
ready for the press by first, the fact that Kress
Hall, where the President’s offices were located,
is two miles from the ‘‘Little White House,”
and second, the lack of mimeograph machines,
which made it necessary to prepare typewritten
copies. Mr. McIntyre informed the correspond-
ents of the forthcoming release between 10 and
10:30. The correspondents were all gathered in
Kress Hall by 12.

In short, to quote Arthur Robb, of Editor
and Publisher: ‘‘The so-called nightshirt party
. . . was reported by some correspondents with
somewhat more color than meticulous accuracy
in detail. . . . The ‘nightshirt’ angle was a nat-
ural, and like so many newspaper naturals, it
had to be achieved by avoiding inconvenient
facts.”

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

Over UP teletypes last month
Contrast clattered this story:

LONDON, April 24.— President Roosevelt’s new
“pump-priming” program will save the world tem-
porarily from almost complete economic collapse. Sir
George Paish, wartime economic adviser to the Lloyd
George Cabinet, said in an interview tonight.

Until a fortnight ago, when Mr. Roosevelt began
divulging his plans for new government spending,
lending, and credit, Sir George said, “I feared a
world economic breakdown late this spring. Now
the outlook for at least a year has changed ...”

Among the clients of the United Press is the
Providence Journal, militant New Deal critic.
Deftly, the Journal switched the quotes around,
shifted the eleventh paragraph into the lead,
made some other changes. Here is how it finally
ran the story:

SEES RECOVERY BY SPENDING
ONLY AS LONG AS CASH LASTS

SIR GEORGE PAISH CRITICIZES U. S. PLAN

DECLARES BUILDING BOOM WOULD RESULT
IN MORE LASTING BENEFITS

LONDON, April 24 (UP) — A recovery policy
based upon the expenditure of money can be suc-
cessful in itself only as long as the money holds out,
Sir George Paish, wartime economic adviser to the
Lloyd George Cabinet, declared tonight. . . .

On the Hearst papers it’s the in-
Protest competent reporter, indeed, who

cannot arouse public opinion to
fever pitch at twenty minutes notice, and with
only the help of the nearest telephone book.
The reporter has merely to call ten or twelve
people, who, he knows, are sure to agree with
the current Hearst campaign; ask them please
to agree for publication; and there he is. Within
two hours, his paper will announce: PUB-
LIC DECRIES . . . PATRIOTIC LEADERS
CLAMOR

If his editor wants to convert the clamor into
action, the reporter’s job is somewhat more dif-
ficult. He will have to attend meetings of the
local American Legion, the Daughters of the
American Revolution, and similar groups; and
get their officials to introduce resolutions. He
may even have to write the resolutions himself.
He may also have to write bills, induce legisla-

tors to propose them, lobby for their passage at
the state capitol.

In New York City, two months ago, reporters
for the Journal and American succeeded be-
yond their most fervid hopes in prodding the
public to protest against the appointment of
Simon Gerson, Communist newspaperman, as
special assistant to Stanley Isaacs, president
of the Borough of Manhattan. Even liberal
groups, which almost invariably are opposed
to Hearst policies and Hearst crusades, joined
the clamor against Gerson. Even the New York
Post, which has baited Hearst as energetically
as Hearst baits the Communists.

Last month, in Boston, Hearst reporters again
were quivering with fear of the “red menace.”
Unlike their New Y 7 ork colleagues, however,
they found but few to quiver with them. Gran-
ville Hicks, former editor of the Communist
New Masses, had been asked to join the staff
of Harvard College as fellow in American His-
tory. In the city room of the Boston American
reporters leaped to ’phones. Twenty members
of the Grand Army of the Republic protested.
The Watertown lodge of the Elks protested.
Daniel J. Doherty, National Commander of
the American Legion, protested. The American
said that Robert S. Hillyer, Pulitzer Prize win-
ner, had protested too; but Mr. Hillyer de-
nied it.

Undergraduates, bustling across the Harvard
Yard on their way to class, were stopped by
American reporters, and urged to sign petitions
against Hicks. Few did, but the American nev-
ertheless reported: STUDENTS REVOLT
ON RED PROFESSOR. When even the Young
Conservatives, the most right-wing student
group at the university, announced their ap-
proval of Hicks’ appointment, the American
just gave up.

One day last month in Troy,
TaxCENTinels N. Y., students of Rensse-
laer Polytechnic Institute,
by wandering from shop to shop, from bank to
bank, managed to collect 250,000 pennies in
less than eight hours. This was half of the city’s
normal supply; and by nightfall pennies were
scarce in Troy, and business was badly hobbled.
Grocers used postage stamps to make change;
other business men were forced to adjust their
odd-cent prices.

To New York newspapermen, who dashed

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

7 1

over from Albany to cover the story, Robert G.
Baumann, president of the Student Union, ex-
plained that his purpose in organizing the
penny-raid was to protest against “hidden
taxes." He announced the formation of the
TaxCENTinels “to help fight the growth of
taxes, which now consume 25 cents out of every
dollar spent by the average person . . . [by pay-
ing] one-quarter of the price of all purchases
in pennies in order to dramatize this situa-
tion. ..." With their hoarded pennies, under-
graduates at once proceeded to carry out this
program, and Troy business men had another
bad day.

Commented Dr. William Otis Hotchkiss, pres-
ident of Rensselaer: “A sure sign of spring "

The stunt was less a sign of spring, however,
than of the efficiency of the Carl Byoir organ-
ization. Carl Byoir & Associates, Inc. is prob-
ably the biggest, and certainly the most active
public relations organization in the country.
Among its clients are the Republic of China,
the city of Miami, the Aluminum Company of
America, the Freeport Sulphur Company.

While Troy shopkeepers were frantically
scratching around for pennies, John Dougherty,
of the Carl Byoir organization, sat in his room
at the Hendrick Hudson Hotel, banging out
newspaper releases and feature stories about
their plight. Cornering him there, George L.
Cassidy, of the New York Post asked Mr. Dough-
erty what he was doing so far away from home,
and how come he was helping to publicize the
TaxCENTinels. Mr. Dougherty explained: he
was in the neighborhood, and decided to call
on Mr. Baumann; talking about the Veterans
of Foreign Wars, they happened to evolve the
idea of the penny-raid; since he was partly re-
sponsible for the idea, he thought it only right
that he do his share in carrying it out.

Mr. Dougherty was less than frank. Actually,
the idea was evolved right in his office as part
of the campaign against discriminatory chain
store legislation, which Carl Byoir Sc Associates
has undertaken for some of its clients. Public
sentiment against the chain stores is so great
that it would probably be worse than futile to
attack such legislation directly. On the other
hand, anti-chain store measures are generally
tax measures, designed to increase the chain
store’s overhead, and, thereby, make it difficult,
if not impossible, for it to undersell the in-
dependent dealer. If the public could be made
to feel that all taxes which raise prices are un-

desirable, it might be less inclined to levy spe-
cial taxes against the chain stores — and thus
remove die greatest menace to their continued
prosperity.

That is the strategy of the Carl Byoir cam-
paign; and this is what brought John Dough-
erty to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At
present, Byoir is planning another organization
against “hidden taxes." It will not be tempo-
rary, as was the TaxCENTinels, but perma-
nent; not local, but nation-wide. It will attempt
to gain the support of all consumers.

And it will arise “spontaneously."

Atop its editorial page the
Fair Enough ? Flew York World-Telegram

carries the Scripps-Howard—
motto: “Give Light, and the People Will Find
Their Own Way." At the bottom of the page
generally runs columnist Raymond Clapper’s
daily Washington dispatch. One day last
month, snapping at critics of the reorganiza-
tion bill, Mr. Clapper asked: “Why All the
Shouting?" Among the critics of the bill was
the World-Telegram. Motto to the contrary, the
World-Telegram did not print Mr. Clapper’s
dispatch that day.

Nor did the World-Telegram print West-
brook Pegler’s column on the Spanish civil war.
Mr. Pegler had written: “I cannot see why the
working-class Catholics are expected to be in-
dignant against the government side in Spain.

I think their indignation should be directed
against those members of the Spanish clergy
and the well born Spaniards of the Catholic
faith who neglected a duty that was placed
upon them. To them, originally, rather than
to the mobs which raged in the early days of
the war, I would charge the blame for the
slaughter of priests and nuns." Among the pa-
pers which buy Mr. Pegler’s column the World-
Telegram was hardly alone in feeling that it
would not be politic to print this particular
article. The New Republic (May 11, 1938)
printed this article under the caption “Fair
Enough" — the title of Mr. Pegler’s syndicated
column.

Our faith in advertising was un-
Advts. dermined again last month. Not

that we question the sincerity of
those who lend their names to advertised prod-
ucts; but occasionally we come across some-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

thing in the magazines that just makes us
wonder.

It was perplexing to read the interview with
Marion Talley in the New York Herald Tri-
bune, in which the famous opera star declared
that she had taken off so much weight by going
for long walks around Manhattan Island. We
had always understood that Ry-Krisp was re-
sponsible.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. Is enforcement of political party loyalty, with
threat of reprisals, a form of propaganda? Does it
limit freedom of speech and assembly of United
States citizens?

2. Do Government officials who are party to this
enforcement abuse their rights? Does the example of
such enforcement tend to intimidate heads of busi-
nesses dependent in one form or another upon
Government cooperation? Do non-governmental
organizations (e.g., schools and colleges, pressure
groups, patriotic societies, professional and business
associations, industries) enforce similar loyalty in
the areas of their greatest interests?

3. Is secrecy vital in the early stages of arriving at
international agreements? Can publicity harm un-

Nor can we understand how it happens that
Dolores Del Rio, the movie star, has given
testimonials both to Camels and to Lucky
Strikes.

And who really know tobacco best, the auc-
tioneers, buyers, and warehousemen, who smoke
Luckies, or the tobacco planters who smoke
Camels?

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

finished negotiations? In this respect what are the
differences between democratic and dictatorial gov-
ernments in obligations toward the people?

4. Would public ownership of newspapers be any
more dangerous than public ownership of the post-
office? Discuss the implications and ramifications of
this question.

5. Discuss the obligations of newspaper publishers
when they are guaranteed freedom of the press. Be
specific.

6. How much are you influenced by the advertis-
ing statements of manufacturers? Do many manu-
facturers deliberately try to mislead the public? How
can people inform themselves better about their
purchases?

JUNE 16 , 1938

SPECIAL LETTER ON

The Channels of Communication

w The Jersey City Journal likes

* to refer to Congressman Jerry

O’Connell as “dear Jerry.” Captions tell how
" ‘Dear Jerry’ Meets John Law.” Headlines
sneer that “Scared ‘Dear Jerry’ Later Turns
‘Brave.’ ” The Journal demands that Mr.
O’Connell stay in Washington and mind his
own business. Its political columnist, D. John
Rickard, calls him “the whoopee-doop congress-
man from the reed regions.”

The Journal is anything but friendly toward
“whoopee-doop congressmen.” Nor does it care
much for “nit-wit professors from hunky-dunk
colleges,” who clamor for “so-called ‘freedom
of speech.’ ” Mr. Rickard likens them, in his
more restrained moments, to animals “frothing
with hydrophobia.” Mr. Rickard complains:
“These mad and vicious creatures snarl and
growl and strive to bite us.”

Back in the days when Mayor Frank Hague
was first consolidating his power, the Journal
could be just as critical of him as the rest of the
nation’s press is now. It charged him with steal-
ing city funds. It asked: “How did Hague get
his money? Where did he get it? How can he
buy a palace at Deal on $ 8,000 a year?” But
Hague, like every dictator, couldn’t stand for
opposition from the press. He decided to kick
the Journal into subservience. He announced
that any city or county employee who read the
Journal would be dismissed at once. Police and
firemen were ordered to distribute from door
to door leaflets denouncing the Journal as “self-
ish and dishonest.” They were also ordered to
subscribe to an opposition paper, more friendly
to Hague, and to obtain other subscriptions.

Advertisers were asked to boycott the Jour-
nal. Most of them did. One movie exhibitor

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

who refused was suddenly overwhelmed by po-
lice, fire, health, and building inspectors. They
nailed dozens of violation notices on his thea-
tre, and finally told him to close it.

Nowadays, the lournal says that Mayor Frank
Hague is “the red-blooded leader of red-blooded
Americans,” that “his whole political career is
built upon public confidence in his unyielding
opposition to every lawless element/' Hague is
the law in Jersey City. And that’s all right as far
as the lournal is concerned.

Hague seems to keep the support of the Jer-
sey City press just as he keeps his political ma-
chine together — by patronage. Mr. Rickard,
for example, has profited greatly from his loy-
alty to Hague. Several of his relatives are on the
Jersey City payroll. His wife, mother of five
children, recently was appointed “confidential
investigator” for Hudson County judges. Her
salary will be $3,500 a year. And Mr. Rickard,
himself, is doing Frank Hague’s publicity in his
spare time.

It’s commonplace in Jersey City for news-
papermen to get their wives and relatives on
the city payroll; and some newspapermen, in
fact, are even on the payroll themselves. As far
back as 1929, the Case Legislative Committee
discovered that one reporter was drawing pay
from the city as “utility man,” while another
was getting his as “a laborer.” A managing edi-
tor doubles as state librarian at $5,000 a year.
According to David G. Wittels, of the New York
Post , reporters who cover the courts are occa-
sionally given receiverships to keep them happy.

Although President Roosevelt has said that
Hague is merely a local issue, the Hague re-
gime has, nevertheless, become page-one news
throughout the country and the problem of
keeping the press under control has grown more
troublesome. Philadelphia and New York news-
papers circulate in Jersey City, and their sales are
mounting steadily. Unfortunately for Hague, it
seems impossible for him to intimidate them as
he did the local papers.

Not that he doesn’t try. Charles Zerner, the
Jersey City reporter for the New York Times, is
barred from many city offices. His automobile
has been tampered with. One night a squad of
men attempted to break into his apartment.
Several months ago, Police Chief Harry Walsh
called on the editors of his paper to demand
that he be fired.

Similarly, the New York Post last month dis-
covered that policemen had told more than

two hundred Jersey City newsdealers to re-
move the paper from their stands. The Post
immediately went into Federal Court to ask for
an injunction. “I’m not going to make any
speeches about the freedom of the press, al-
though that issue is clearly involved here,” said
Federal Judge William Clark, in granting the
request.

Quotes ^ now seems t ^ iat despite the best
efforts of the Columbia Press Serv-
ice, which supplies newspapers with special fea-
ture stories from Washington, D. C., the Seattle
Star's four-point recovery program will find it
necessary to get along without the support of
Harold G. Moulton, head of the Brookings In-
stitution. Nor can it count on much help — in
the near future, at least — from Arthur Capper,
Gerald P. Nye, Lewis B. Schwellenbach, and
Homer Bone. Some of the Senators, in fact,
don’t feel the least bit sympathetic toward
either the Star or its program these days. As for
the Columbia Press Service, it had better watch
its step or Senator Schwellenbach will make an-
other speech.

Nobody can accuse the Columbia Press Serv-
ice of not having tried. No sooner had the Star
announced, “Business Dying; Here’s the Way
to Save It,” when back came the Columbia Press
Service with the report that Dr. Moulton and
the four Senators were in favor of its plan. A
new tax law, in which it would be provided
that no changes might be made during the next
five years; abandonment of the New Deal’s
power development program; stabilization of
the dollar; amendment of the Wagner Act —
these were the points of the Star's recovery plan.
The Columbia Press Service reported, and the
Star duly printed that Dr. Moulton had said of
them: “99 per cent of the American people still
want a nation free of the hardship of totali-
tarianism,” and I, therefore, “congratulate the
Star on its program.” Senator Nye was quoted:
“I know of no better way to bring this [domestic
and industrial peace] about than to adopt the
principle outlined in the Seattle Star." The
others were said to have been similarly im-
pressed.

Unfortunately, the Columbia Press Service
had never bothered to interview either Dr.
Moulton or the four Senators; and, when the
latter were shown the Star's glowing story, they
nearlv blew up. Senators Nye and Capper in-

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

formed Senator Schwellenbach that so far as
they knew they had never read the four-point
program; and Senator Schwellenbach informed
the Senate: “I not only never heard of the Star’s
four-point program, but I never heard of the
Seattle Star ”

And the Senator asserted that it seemed as if
“. . . the newspaper profession of this country
has reached its lowest ebb.”

Immediately, Prescott Dennett, head of the
Columbia Press Service, apologized profusely.
“A new employee” was responsible for the
phoney quotes, he said. The Seattle Star , he
said, was entirely blameless: It had printed the
story in good faith.

q The nation’s radio broadcasters are

suffering at present from an excep-
tionally bad case of nerves. In Washington
things have been going rather badly for them.
Government officials and members of Congress
on several occasions have taken pot-shots at
some of the programs that now fill the ether. All
sorts of bills to investigate, tax, and regulate the
industry have been discussed.

If public opinion were to sour on the indus-
try, some of these bills might pass. So the na-
tion’s broadcasters have been taking steps, of
late, to keep on the public’s good side. When,
for example, the clamor arose over Mae West’s
“Garden of Eden” program, so jittery did
N.B.C. officials become that Edward L. Ber-
nays was called in and hired as public relations
consultant.

Similarly, the National Association of Broad-
casters has just taken on three new publicity
men: Edward M. Kirby, to advise on public
relations; Paul F. Peter, for research and sta-
tistics; and Joseph L. Miller, for straight pub-
licity, with special emphasis on labor.

In addition, the N.A.B. has completely re-
vamped its constitution. Heretofore, the presi-
dency of the N.A.B. has been an honorary
post, filled by a member of the association, who
served only part-time, and without pay. Under
the new set-up, the president is given far greater
powers, will serve full-time, and will receive
$25,000 annually.

Neville Miller, former Mayor of Louisville,
Kentucky, is expected to receive the appoint-
ment. As “czar” of the broadcasting industry,
he will be asked to put its house in order, and

to embark upon what the magazine Broadcast-
ing calls “an open fight against the enemies of
radio.”

. , Once Dave Beck was Seattle’s bo-

Labor

geyman. The Seattle Post-Intelli-
gencer seldom missed an opportunity to sputter
its disapproval of him; and sometimes, as when
he ordered his burly teamsters onto the picket
line, which the American Newspaper Guild had
thrown about the Post-Intelligencer building,
it almost choked with rage. But things are dif-
ferent now. Today, as West Coast leader of the
American Federation of Labor, Beck is fighting
to save the business men of Seattle from “Harry
Bridges, the C. I.O., and revolution.” And if
the Guild thinks less of him since it has left
the A. F. of L. to join the C. I. O., the Post-
Intelligencer thinks more, lots more.

So the Post-lntellvencer was anything but
pleased by Westbro Pegler’s recent series on
Dave Beck and the \v» Coast labor movement.
One column, “Fascism in America,” in which
Mr. Pegler told how Beck cooperates with busi-
ness at the expense of the consumer and de-
scribed his manipulations in the beer industry,
was omitted entirely. Another, “Boss Beck,” was
heavily blue-pencilled. Apparently the Post-
Intelligencer didn’t think its readers should
know about Beck’s elegant hotel suite, his sal-
ary— $12,500 a year and expenses — his boast
that “I have operated every brewery up here
for three years.” Mr. Pegler’s comparison be-
tween Dave Beck’s domination of Seattle busi-
ness and Capone’s old rackets also was deleted,
as were his references to Beck’s “arm-and-leg
breaking.” To quote Walter Winchell, Hearst
columnist, whose copy has likewise been cut, of
late: “The boss lets his paragrapher jot down
anything that comes into his noodle. The boss
can always throw the column away. Hey, West-
brook?”

)

America’s bias contest is over; and
Blos to A. H. McDonald, of Tenafly,
N. J., has gone the first prize of $25. Mr. Mc-
Donald clipped from the Bergen (N. J.) Eve-
ning Record an involved and rather impas-
sioned letter, reprinted in America for April 23,
which expressed the view that Jesus Christ was
probably the illegitimate son of Mary by some
Roman soldier. It was, the judges felt, by far

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

the most odious example of anti-Catholic bias
that has recently appeared in the American
press.

America's purpose in holding the contest was
to drive home to its readers the extent of anti-
Catholic propaganda in the press; and this it
did, at least in the mind of the Rev. John A.
Toomey, S. J., associate editor. According to
Father Toomey the contest drove home another
phenomenon: the way in which the American
press, “from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from
the Gulf to the Canadian border, is falsifying
the situation in Spain.”

To remedy this, America wants Catholic or-
ganizations to combine their forces and bear
down on newspapers and magazines to prevent
the publication of anti-Catholic or pro-Loyalist
articles. In New York City the press committees
of eighteen Catholic societies have already, to
quote Father Toomey, “effected a united Cath-
olic front in the press and magazine field,” and
similar movements are underway elsewhere.
Such consolidation, says Father Toomey, will
increase the power of Catholics to influence the
press because editors don’t mind “having little
dogs snap at their heels,” but very few would
like to have “lions getting cross with them.”

"Facts of Life" ° f New York ’ s eight

major newspapers, two

— J. David Stern’s Evening Post and J. M. Pat-
terson’s Daily News — are boisterously pro-New
Deal. The others range from approval of the
President’s milder policies to apoplectic con-
demnation of his every word. The New Deal
papers battle for New Deal measures with their
news as well as with their editorial columns.
And make no bones about it. At the same time,
however, they charge that other newspapers are
equally biased in their presentation of the news,
if not more so— though, of course, in the oppo-
site direction.

On several occasions both the Post and the
Daily News have attempted to prove their
charge of prejudice by getting down to cases.
The Daily News chortles at the New York
Times for putting G. O. P. condemnation of
increased expenditures for W. P. A. on page
one, while reserving the last page in the paper
for Cleveland’s relief breakdown. “Wishful
thinking,” laughs the News. Again, it calls on

the World-Telegram to stop playing up the
Gerson affair, referring to Simon W. Gerson as
“New York’s one-man red menace.” The World-
Telegram is boring its readers to death, says the
News. What is worse, it’s giving those Com-
munists too much publicity.

And, while the Daily Nexus barks playfully at
the rest of the New York press, the Post snaps
at their heels and bites. One day last month, it
exploded: “Add Facts of Life — News Unfit to
Print.” It charged the New York Times , which
prides itself on its complete impartiality in its
news columns, with burying the news of Su-
preme Court decisions in favor of the New
Deal, while overplaying the unfavorable ver-
dicts. Said the Post: What happened in the
Court on May 23 was handled by the Times as
though it “were playing hide-the-slipper.” The
Court’s refus; 1 to permit three South Carolina
utility compa - to appeal from a lower court
decision was nowhere in the paper; neither was
mention of Chief Justice Hughes’ tart question-
ing of counsel for Republic Steel. Three deci-
sions in favor of the National Labor Relations
Board were hidden in the fifth paragraph of a
story on page six; Hughes’ rebuke of the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals was pushed back into
page 33-

“Would it have been indelicate to let the
readers of the Times know what really hap-
pened?” asked the Post.

Next day the Post erupted again with “The
Facts of Life for Newspaper Readers: No. 3.”
A press release had been sent out by Fortune ,
the magazine of business, on its quarterly poll
of public opinion, which had shown that Presi-
dent Roosevelt’s popularity was nearly as great
as ever. Coupled with this was an editorial, in
which Fortune denounced business for its op-
position to social reform.

The Herald Tribune, despite its thoroughgo-
ing disapproval of the President, ran the results
of the poll, although it made no mention of the
editorial. The World-Telegram ran both the
editorial and the poll. The story was ignored,
however, by the Journal and American , the
Sun , and the New York Times . This caused the
Post to declare:

When an important story from a major source is
omitted and readers are kept in ignorance of a sig-
nificant pro-Roosevelt poll, are kept in the dark
about our leading business magazine's rebuke to
business, it is time for a checkup.

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

have been careful to avoid the controversial,
fearing to antagonize their fellow producers,
the Hays office, State censors, political, civic,
and religious groups, and foreign nations. Pic-
tures that deal with sociological themes have
been made before, of course, but seldom have
there been pictures to provoke such conflict.

Only last month, Samuel Goldwyn an-
nounced that he was abandoning his plan to
produce The Exiles , an original story by Vera
Caspary and George Sklar, which tells of the
flight of Jewish artists, scientists, and writers to
America, to escape persecution in their native
Germany. Other pro ~s had brought pres-
sure to bear on Mr. Goldwyn; the Hays office
had refused to approve the script unless it was
drastically revised; and there had been rumors
that Germany would not only ban the picture
itself, but would seek to induce other nations
to ban it, too.

Paths of Glory , Humphrey Cobb’s best-sell-
ing novel of the French general who slaugh-
tered his own troops, has been shunted around
the Paramount office for nearly two years. Para-
mount at one time had ambitious plans for its
production; but France protested, and so the
plans were shelved.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer owns the motion pic-
ture rights to Franz WerfePs The Forty Days
of Musa Dagh, an exciting and dramatic story
of the slaughter of embattled Armenian vil-
lagers during the World War. In the face of
protests by the French and Turkish govern-
ments, however, Metro has been rather hesitant
to make it.

Metro also owns It Can't Happen Here, by
Sinclair Lewis. It has never produced it because
of pressure from the Hays office, which also
caused the abandonment of plans to produce
Karl Kapek’s satire on the machine age, R. U.
R., and Sergei Eisenstein’s version of Theodore
Dreiser’s American Tragedy .

Blockade, whatever its artistic merits, is,
therefore, an unusual picture — Hollywood’s
first excursion into the field of political and re-
ligious controversy. Whether other producers
will follow Mr. Wanger’s lead is said to depend
upon Blockade's financial success. Metro-Gold-
wyn-Mayer is holding up the production of
Idiot's Delight to see whether Blockade does
well at the box-office, for, says Variety, although
the stories “bear no similarity in plot, they do
in theme, and if Blockade can successfully clear
the obstacles of international distribution, then

Idiot's Delight, more potently charged with per-
sonalities, is likely to touch satisfactory income
figures.”

Similarly, Mr. Wanger has temporarily post-
poned the shooting of Vincent Sheean’s Per-
sonal History, which has been adapted for the
movies by John Howard Lawson and Budd
Schulberg. United Artists, the company which
distributes Mr. Wanger’s productions, has in-
duced him to wait for the reaction to Blockade
first.

zGrz

Stunt One ^ ne ^ aSt mont *h eight once
opulent motion picture stars, now
forced to work as extras for Selznick-Interna-
tional, petitioned Governor Merriam, of Cali-
fornia, to protect future stars from throwing
away their money as they had. They suggested
that 10 per cent of every movie player’s salary
be held for him by the State, to safeguard
against the rainy day that would come when
his popularity had begun to decline.

Hollywood correspondents pounced upon
the story; and newspapers played it big, from
coast to coast — with pictures, interviews, and
autobiographies. Editorial writers gurgled with
pity or seethed with indignation over the
plight of the former stars, and Governor Mer-
riam announced, quite solemnly, that he would
give the suggestion his most serious considera-
tion.

All of which must have greatly pleased Rus-
sell Birdwell, who is the director of publicity
for Selznick-International. It was he who
thought up the whole idea. The ex-movie stars,
who petitioned the Governor, were just playing
another part, one that Mr. Birdwell’s staff had
written for them.

Lie-factory

About fifteen years ago Riga
was probably our most fertile
source of news about the Soviet Union, more
fertile, by far, than even Moscow, itself. The
capital of Latvia was packed with refugees; and
more kept pouring in, bringing with them hair-
raising tales of the Soviet terror — of murder,
arson, civil war, and banditry. So American
newspapers and press associations kept crack
men at Riga; and, daily, American newspaper
readers gaped with horror at the headlines and
wondered how such things could be.

After the dispatches from Riga had told of

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

1. It is generally recognized among informed
people that the theories of Father Coughlin, Huey
Long, and Dr. Townsend indicate an ignorance or
lack of recognition of many economic facts and laws.
Yet these men were successful public speakers and
had immense followings. Similarly, Hitler's economic
and racial theories are far removed from those gen-
erally accepted by thoughtful students of the sub-
jects. Discuss the following questions and ask a
member of the group to write a brief report of the
discussion: Does a leader need to be informed? How
much ignorance will the public stand? Do crowds
prefer promises to facts? What do we mean when we
say that democracy depends upon education?

2. Attend a pc 4 -^ meeting or listen to a radio
discussion. Follow are opinions and arguments car-
fully. Immediately afterwards go off by yourself and
consider these questions: What precisely is the con-
flict of interest or faith involved in the disagreement?
Of what is each side afraid? How much is real and

how much is imagined danger? Note your answers.
Discuss them at your next group meeting. Then
inject into the discussion a clear definition of the
conflicting dangers. Observe the results.

3. Attend a meeting or listen to a speech over the
radio. Ask another member of the group not to hear
it but to read it. Discuss your interpretations of the
speech. This may reveal much about innuendo.

4. Make a survey of race attitudes among the
members of your group. Then read Bruno Lasker’s
Race Attitudes in Children (New York: Henry Holt
and Co., 1929). How many of the members of the
group are against or fearful of Negroes, Japanese,
Germans, Jews, Catholics? How many think the white
race is superior in every way? Discuss the origin of
these attitudes giving attention to one’s background,
geographical location, schooling, reading, religious
beliefs, etc. How can we develop a more tolerant atti-
tude toward people of different race, religion, politi-
cal and economic beliefs?

JULY 16, 1938

SPECIAL LETTER ON

The Channels of Communication

n It may very well be true, as

Still-Born TA7 , TAr , .

Walter Wanger has so earnestly

declared, that Blockade, his sermon against the
slaughter of non-combatants in the Spanish
civil war, never was intended as pro-Loyalist
propaganda; but those in this country who
sympathize either with the Loyalists or with
the Insurgents will hardly be convinced of that.
Mr. Wanger approached his theme as gingerly
as though it threatened suddenly to explode in
his face; and there is nothing in the picture
itself to identify the locale or the opposing
armies. Day after day, however, the headlines
tell of the bombing of Loyalist cities, the block-
ade of Loyalist ports. And they are identifica-
tion enough.

Not since The Birth of a Nation has any pic-
ture created so much controversy as Blockade.
No sooner did it open than Joseph Lamb,
deputy of the New York Council, Knights of
Columbus, denounced the movie as “subtle
pro-Loyalist propaganda.” The Board of Direc-
tors of the K. of C., meeting in New Haven,
called it “historically false and intellectually

dishonest.” The Catholic News predicted that
it would “stir up prejudice, bad feeling, and
contention.” The Brooklyn Tablet demanded:
“Blockade ‘Blockade’!”

Naturally, Loyalist sympathizers have de-
fended the picture as vigorously as partisans of
General Franco have denounced it. The Na-
tion, the New Masses, the American Guardian,
and other liberal and left-wing publications
have urged their readers to crown Blockade
with “the laurel that Hollywood and Will Hays
recognize: box-office success.” A similar plea
has been made by the Associated Film Audi-
ences. In England, where Blockade shattered
the house record at the London Pavilion, leaf-
lets praising the movie have been distributed
by the Spanish Defendents’ Aid Committee. In
the autumn, when the picture gets its general
British release, the Trades Union Council
plans to call upon its millions of members to
see it.

According to reports, Hollywood is follow-
ing the controversy over Blockade with more
than usual interest. Heretofore, the producers

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

Only last month, Samuel Goldwyn an-
nounced that he was abandoning his plan to
produce The Exiles, an original story by Vera
Caspary and George Sklar, which tells of the
flight of Jewish artists, scientists, and writers to
America, to escape persecution in their native
Germany. Other producers had brought pres-
sure to bear on Mr. Goldwyn; the Hays office
had refused to app. e the script unless it was
drastically revised; and there had been rumors
that Germany would not only ban the picture
itself, but uld seek to induce other nations
to ban it, t .

Paths oj Mory, Humphrey Cobb’s best-sell-
ing novel of the French general who slaugh-
tered his own troops, has been shunted around
the Paramount office for nearly two years. Para-
mount at one time had ambitious plans for its
production; but France protested, and so the
plans were shelved.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer owns the motion pic-
ture rights to Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days
oj Musa Dagh, an exciting and dramatic story
of the slaughter of embattled Armenian vil-
lagers during the World War. In the face of
protests by the French and Turkish govern-
ments, however, Metro has been rather hesitant
to make it.

Blockade, whatever its artistic merits, is,
therefore, an unusual picture — Hollywood’s
first excursion into the field of political and re-
ligious controversy. Whether other producers
will follow Mr. Wanger’s lead is said to depend
upon Blockade's financial success. Metro-Gold-
wyn-Mayer is holding up the production of
Idiot's Delight to see whether Blockade does
well at the box-office, for, says Variety , although
the stories “bear no similarity in plot, they do
in theme, and if Blockade can successfully clear
the obstacles of international distribution, then

Idiot's Delight, more potently charged with per-
sonalities, is likely to touch satisfactory income
figures.”

oc/z

Stunt One ^ ne * ast mont k> eight once
opulent motion picture stars, now
forced to work as extras for Selznick-Interna-
tional, petitioned Governor Merriam, of Cali-
fornia, to protect future stars from throwing
away their money as they had. They suggested
that 10 per cent of every movie player’s salary
be held for him by the State, to safeguard
against the rainy day that would come when
his popularity had begun to decline.

Lie- factory

After the dispatches from Riga had told of

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship, the de-
struction of Moscow, and the victory of the
White Armies for the sixth or seventh time,
however, American newspaper editors began
to suspect that Riga, while undoubtedly their
most prolific source of Soviet news, was prob-
ably not their most reliable. They began to call
it ‘"the Riga lie-factory,” and they ordered their
correspondents to Moscow.

Of all the great news-gathering agencies, only
two — The Times, of London, and the Chicago
Tribune-N. Y. News Syndicate Co., Inc. — still
keep top-notch me. at Riga, still rely upon it
for their Soviet news. Last month, the Chicago
Tribune correspondent, Donald Day, had this
story to re rt: Workers in the Josef Stalin
Automobfl Works had risen in revolt against
the Soviet regime; after demolishing the ma-
chines, and setting the factory afire, they had
erected barricades and fought a pitched battle
with members of the Moscow Fire Department
and the G. P. U.; an undetermined number had
been killed, and 3,000 were under arrest.

As far as the Institute has been able to de-
termine, few American news editors bothered
to ask their Moscow correspondents to check
Mr. Day’s story. One, who did, received the
laconic reply: “Huh?”

I . While the National Education As-

y sociation was meeting in New York

last month. Professor William Gellermann’s
thesis, The American Legion as Educator , was
published by the Bureau of Publications,
Teachers College, Columbia University. It was
immediately charged that some one at Teach-
ers College wanted to embarrass the N. E. A. by
giving newspaper readers the impression that
the N. E. A. was in some way responsible for
Professor Gellermann’s study. On the contrary,
the New York Times’ page-one story about the
dissertation appeared on the opening day of
the educators’ convention simply because the
books went on sale that day. Teachers College
had expected that the books would be ready
for sale as early as May 15; but delays at the
bindery made delivery coincide with the open-
ing of the convention. The coincidence was not
premeditated; it was sheer accident.

Actually Dr. Gellermann finished his thesis
last summer. At that time New York reporters
were told about the story. A New York Post
reporter was asked to write the story. After the

assistant city editor had discussed the study
with the managing editor, however, the order
was countermanded.

Also, the New York Times and Herald Tri-
bune correspondents saw hot news in Geller-
mann’s study and told their superiors about it.
But no story appeared in either paper.

Still later, another Post reporter brought the
study to his city editor’s attention. It was killed
again. Still no story.

Finally, in May, 1938, Professor Geller-
mann’s thesis was announced for publication,
and reporters were informed that it would be
publicized in the routine manner on publica-
tion date.

It was only by coincidence that Professor Gel-
lermann’s book came from the printers when
it did. A Times reporter wrote two columns
about it at the request of his editors. The
Times, previously cold to Gellermann’s study,
now decided to play it on page one.

The next day the Times attacked the study.
The Post and the Herald Tribune, which had
ignored the study in their news columns,
praised it loudly.

Thus far, the controversy over the Geller-
mann analysis of the Legion has taken chiefly
the form of name calling. Few of those who
have attacked Professor Gellermann bothered
to read his book or answer his specific charges.
They have shouted; “Crackpot, red, Commu-
nist, un-American, libel, Moscow, jackass, puny
mind, fly-speck.” Of course. Professor Geller-
mann was guilty of name calling himself when
he spoke of the Legion as being “potentially
fascist” and linked it with such organizations
as the Black Legion. However, as Professor Gel-
lermann later pointed out in a letter to the
Times, his conclusions were based upon long
research and “factual evidence.”

Dr. Gellermann’s letter to the Times, inci-
dentally, was probably responsible for Ralph
Thompson’s highly favorable book review
which appeared in the same issue.

< 'jCT*

Tit for Tat

“Oil and ‘the More Abundant
Life’ ... an Epic for America’s
Newspaper Readers.”

Under this streamer last month eighteen
newspaper publishers, including Frank E. Gan-
nett, of the powerful Gannett chain, and J.
Noel Macy, of the Westchester Newspapers,
seven influential dailies in New York’s opulent

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

Westchester County, told readers of Editor and
Publisher the story of the petroleum industry
— ac v the petroleum industry prefers to have it
told:

Nearly fourteen billion dollars have been in-
vested by two million Americans in the petro-
leum industry. One million employes receive
$1,500,000,000 in wages from it every year;
eleven million workers are dependent upon it,
eith iirectly or indirectly, for their living. Di-
rect taxes on gasoline alone totaled $964,000,000
in 1937.

Mr. Gannett and his fellow-publishers
p ued their rosy picture in two pages of paid
ad\ .rtising, splattered with photos of battle-
ships, tractors, airplanes, streamlined locomo-
tives, oil wells, and trucks. And they concluded:
“Every citizen . . . should be acquainted with
all of the facts of this great industry upon
which his maximum earning power, the health
and education of his family, present and future
comforts and pleasures, as well as safety in
time of war, are so dependent.”

The petroleum industry, they said, is “one to
foster and protect for the good of all America/’
No citizen, once he knew the facts, could fail
to realize that.

Anyone who might have wondered at the ac-
tion of the publishers in buying two pages of
Editor and Publisher to proclaim their rever-

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1 . In a civilization as complex and as fraught with
conflicting propagandas and theories as ours, we
frequently forget the cathartic value of laughter,
particularly of laughter at ourselves, at our strong
prejudices, theories, and assumptions, at their illogic
and inconsistencies. An interesting experiment is to
see what drama and laughter can do to propaganda.
Study cartoons, editorials, letters, speeches, and
other forms of the most extreme expressions of vio-
lent partisanship in such conflicts as those between
the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O., capital and labor,
democratic and dictatorial nations, communism and
capitalism, the New Deal and its foes. Write and
produce a short play which will bring into bold
relief the day’s news of one or more of these con-
flicts. Express the tragic as well as the comic elements
which really exist in a concrete situation— the hyp-
nosis of a single point of view, with its concomitant
dogmatism, fanaticism, and violence.

2. Many organizations with divergent theories
and remedies are sincerely anxious to help preserve
the best in American traditions, principles, and
ideals. Some of these are the American Civil Lib-

ence for the petroleum industry would have
found the answer to his bewilderment in the
final paragraph of the ad. The publishers, he
would have learned, were inviting American
industry to place institutional advertising in
their papers — advertising that would present
industry’s point of view on the economic prob-
lems that now face the nation.

It need hardly be said that any industrialist
would hesitate to put such ads in newspapers
that were giving their readers another picture
of American industry than his. So the publish-
ers had decided to assure the industrialist that
he needn’t worry: they realized no less fully
than he, “what can be accomplished by indi-
vidual enterprise, under the American system
[ah! Glittering Generality!], in the satisfaction
of human needs.”

The newspapers, which are so eager to pre-
sent industry’s story, include the Boston Globe ,
Chicago Tribune , Cincinnati Enquirer , Cleve-
land Press , Columbus Dispatch, Fall River
Herald News, Gannett Newspapers, Harrisburg
Patriot & News, Johnstown Democrat, Johns-
town Tribune , Louisville Courier- Journal,
Louisville Times, New York Sun, Pittsburgh
Press, Scranton Times, Washington Star , West-
chester Newspapers, and Youngstown Vindica-
tor.

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

erties Union, the American Legion, the Descendents
of the American Revolution, the Sons and Daughters
of the .American Revolution. Just what are the
traditions which these groups wish to preserve?
What methods are they using? Are they using
methods consistent with the traditions they wish to
keep? Discuss the traditions which your group wishes
to emphasize. What methods and which propa-
gandas are consistent with these? Which are not?
Can you separate the methods you use from the
goals you desire? Specifically, can you attain democ-
racy by undemocratic methods? What is the function
of propaganda in the kind of a democracy you desire?

3. In our national life, one of the times when
propaganda is particularly rife, when there are
greater conflicts and sharper expressions of opinion,
is during a Presidential election. Then all the
propaganda devices are used. Prepare yourself and
your group for the next national election. Frame a
list of questions to ask candidates. Study the work of
this kind done by the League of Women Voters. If
possible, bring together on the same platform two
candidates for the same office. Inquire into their past

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship, the de-
struction of Moscow, and the victory of the
White Armies for the sixth or seventh time,
however, American newspaper editors began
to suspect that Riga, while undoubtedly their
most prolific source of Soviet news, was prob-
ably not their most reliable. They began to call
it “the Riga lie-factory,” and they ordered their
correspondents to Moscow.

Of all the great news-gathering agencies, only
two — The Times , of London, and the Chicago
Tribune-N. Y. News Syndicate Co., Inc. — still
keep top-notch men at Riga, still rely upon it
for their Soviet news. Last month, the Chicago
Tribune correspondent, Donald Day, had this
story to report: Workers in the Josef Stalin
Automobile Works had risen in revolt against
the Soviet regime; after demolishing the ma-
chines, and setting the factory afire, they had
erected barricades and fought a pitched battle
with members of the Moscow Fire Department
and the G. P. U.; an undetermined number had
been killed, and 3,000 were under arrest.

vOn

. . While the National Education As-

y sociation was meeting in New York

last month. Professor William Gellermann’s
thesis, The American Legion as Educator, was
published by the Bureau of Publications,
Teachers College, Columbia University. It was
immediately charged that some one at Teach-
ers College wanted to embarrass the N. E. A. by
giving newspaper readers the impression that
the N. E. A. was in some way responsible for
Professor Gellermann’s study. On the contrary,
the New York Times’ page-one story about the
dissertation appeared on the opening day of
the educators’ convention simply because the
books went on sale that day. Teachers College
had expected that the books would be ready
for sale as early as May 15; but delays at the
bindery made delivery coincide with the open-
ing of the convention. The coincidence was not
premeditated; it was sheer accident.

Actually Dr. Gellermann finished his thesis
last summer. At that time New York reporters
were told about the story. A New York Post
reporter was asked to write the story. After the

assistant city editor had discussed the study
with the managing editor, however, the order
was countermanded.

Also, the New York Times and Herald Tri-
bune correspondents saw hot news in Geller-
mann’s study and told their superiors about it.
But no story appeared in either paper.

Still later, another Post reporter brought the
study to his city editor’s attention. It was killed
again. Still no story.

Finally, in May, 1938, Professor Geller-
mann’s thesis was announced for publication,
and reporters were informed that it would be
publicized in the routine manner on publica-
tion date.

The next day the T imes attacked the study.
The Post and the Herald Tribune, which had
ignored the study in their news columns,
praised it loudly.

Thus far, the controversy over the Geller-
mann analysis of the Legion has taken chiefly
the form of name calling. Few of those who
have attacked Professor Gellermann bothered
to read his book or answer his specific charges.
They have shouted; “Crackpot, red, Commu-
nist, un-American, libel, Moscow, jackass, puny
mind, fly-speck.” Of course, Professor Geller-
mann was guilty of name calling himself when
he spoke of the Legion as being “potentially
fascist” and linked it with such organizations
as the Black Legion. However, as Professor Gel-
lermann later pointed out in a letter to the
Times, his conclusions were based upon long
research and “factual evidence.”

Dr. Gellermann’s letter to the Times, inci-
dentally, was probably responsible for Ralph
Thompson’s highly favorable book review
which appeared in the same issue.

< 'jQn

Tit for Tot

“Oil and ‘the More Abundant
Life’ ... an Epic for America’s
Newspaper Readers.”

THE CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

Westchester County, told readers of Editor and
Publisher the story of the petroleum industry
— as the petroleum industry prefers to have it
told:

Nearly fourteen billion dollars have been in-
vested by two million Americans in the petro-
leum industry. One million employes receive
$1,500,000,000 in wages from it every year;
eleven million workers are dependent upon it,
either directly or indirectly, for their living. Di-
rect taxes on gasoline alone totaled $964,000,000
in 1937.

Mr. Gannett and his fellow-publishers
painted their rosy picture in two pages of paid
advertising, splattered with photos of battle-
ships, tractors, airplanes, streamlined locomo-
tives, oil wells, and trucks. And they concluded:
“Every citizen . . . should be acquainted with
all of the facts of this great industry upon
which his maximum earning power, the health
and education of his family, present and future
comforts and pleasures, as well as safety in
time of war, are so dependent."

The petroleum industry, they said, is “one to
foster and protect for the good of all America."
No citizen, once he knew the facts, could fail
to realize that.

Anyone who might have wondered at the ac-
tion of the publishers in buying two pages of
Editor and Publisher to proclaim their rever-

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

2. Many organizations with divergent theories
and remedies are sincerely anxious to help preserve
the best in American traditions, principles, and
ideals. Some of these are the American Civil Lib-

It need hardly be said that any industrialist
would hesitate to put such ads in newspapers
that were giving their readers another picture
of American industry than his. So the publish-
ers had decided to assure the industrialist that
he needn’t worry: they realized no less fully
than he, “what can be accomplished by indi-
vidual enterprise, under the American system
[ahl Glittering Generality!], in the satisfaction
of human needs."

The newspapers, which are so eager to pre-
sent industry’s story, include the Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleve-
land Press, Columbus Dispatch, Fall River
Herald News, Gannett Newspapers, Harrisburg
Patriot & News, Johnstown Democrat, Johns-
town Tribune , Louisville Courier- Journal,
Louisville Tunes, New York Sun, Pittsburgh
Press, Scranton Times, Washington Star, West-
chester Newspapers, and Youngstown Vindica-
tor.

AND DISCUSSION NOTES

erties Union, the American Legion, the Descendents
of the American Revolution, the Sons and Daughters
of the American Revolution. Just what are the
traditions which these groups wish to preserve?
What methods are they using? Are they using
methods consistent with the traditions they wish to
keep? Discuss the traditions which your group wishes
to emphasize. What methods and which propa-
gandas are consistent with these? Which are not?
Can you separate the methods you use from the
goals you desire? Specifically, can you attain democ-
racy by undemocratic methods? What is the function
of propaganda in the kind of a democracy you desire?

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

legislative records. Learn about lobbies and pressure
groups. Break down the Glittering Generalities used.
Determine the meaning of the “bad” names used in
the campaign. Find out where the “cards have been
stacked” for or against a particular proposal. Are
the members of your group getting onto the “band
wagon” simply because it is the thing to do or have

they thought through the specific issues in the cam-
paign? Make a list of these issues and from speeches,
editorials, correspondence, and other sources deter-
mine how the candidates would vote and what ac-
tion they would take. Rank the issues in order of
importance, then rank the candidates.

Volume II

OCTOBER 1, 1938

Number 1

News from Europe

T HE print is hardly dry on your newspaper
when already the headlines seem old, stale,
meaningless. Crisis follows crisis, incident
crowds on incident — all with such dizzy speed
that you sometimes feel as though one split-
second alone may stand between war in Eu-
rope, and peace. Only seven months have passed
since Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler stood in Vi-
enna, in the shadow of Nazi guns, and pro-
claimed Anschluss. Today, his troops are
massed along the Czech frontier. Tomorrow —
well, anything can happen tomorrow. T n the
propagandist- training schools of Nazi Ger-
many, where youngsters are taught how to mold
public opinion as though it were fresh-smelling
clay, the chief topic of conversation is now
Rumania. Students are learning how to stir up
pro-Nazi feeling in Rumania — just as Ger-
many did in Austria before Anschluss, just as
Germany did in Sudetenland before Hitler an-
nounced that Sudetenland also must be his.

Offhand, it would therefore seem that Ru-
mania is next on Hitler’s list.

Events move swiftly in Europe today, and
trans-Atlantic cables hum as never before since
the Versailles Treaty. Never before has so much
been written about Europe, nor so much said.
And never before has there been so much con-
fusion about what is actually happening there.
One bulletin contradicts another; one interpre-
tive story contradicts the next.

Of course, some things are clear. Germany’s
Drang nach Osten is under way again. Its goal
is the Ukraine. That much — the bare outline

— is evident . 1 And, the only question is: Will
Germany be stopped?

Day-to-day events, however, are more ob-
scure. On Monday, September 19 , for example,
John T. Whitaker, of the Chicago Daily News,
reported from Prague that Czechoslovakia was
defiant, that she would fight to her last man.
That very day, in the very same edition, how-
ever, M. W. Fodor, another Daily News man in
Prague, reported that Czechoslovakia was back-
ing down. Later came the report from London
that Czechoslovakia had surrendered to Hitler’s
demands. Yet, on Wednesday morning, G. E.
R. Gedye, of the New York Times, cabled that
England and France had renewed their pressure
on Czechoslovakia to surrender; the report
from London, he said, was an outright “lie.”

Similarly, on the same day that Ferdinand
Kuhn, Jr., of the New York Times, reported
from London that England and France had
capitulated to Hitler, Mr. Gedye reported from
Prague that France undoubtedly would stand
by her treaty with the Czechs.

Was there ever any doubt that England and
France would capitulate to Hitler? Perhaps
there was. On the other hand, it may very well
be that Neville Chamberlain and Edouard
Daladier had made their decision even before
Chamberlain’s first visit to Hitler, before the
disorders in Sudetenland or Henlein’s ultima-
tum to Czechoslovakia — before Hitler’s Nu-
remberg speech, in fact. Way back in May,
Constantine Brown wrote in his syndicated
Washington column that England and France

1 It has been evident for some time. In the May issue of
Propaganda Analysis, “Propaganda Techniques of Ger-
man Fascism,” the Institute predicted: “Meanwhile,
German Fascist propaganda may be expected increas-

ingly to penetrate other lands: in some countries, such as
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Rumania, as preparation
for Anschluss; elsewhere as a means of obtaining open
or tacit approval of such German Fascist expansion.”

NEWS FROM EUROPE

had already “sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia/’
And Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Paris correspondent
of the Chicago Daily News, was assured during
the first week of September that Czechoslovakia
had been “sold down the river.”

Why this confusion? How do reputable
American newspapers happen to print reports
that are later revealed as lies? Faced with so
many contradictory reports, what can we be-
lieve?

In the game of diplomacy, that government
is strongest which has public opinion behind
it. A government which doesn’t have the sup-
port of its people starts with two strikes against
it. Hostile world opinion can mean defeat. It
is, therefore, only natural that governments
should befog their every move in propaganda;
that governments should attempt to color the
news, twist fact into fiction and fiction into fact.

One tool which makes this possible is censor-
ship. Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Japan,
the Soviet Union — all censor news dispatches.
Of course, the extent of censorship varies from
country to country, and even in the same coun-
try at different times. A month ago, Czechoslo-
vakia made almost no attempt to censor the
cables. As this is written, the censorship is very
strict. On the other hand, the German censor
does not bother even to read dispatches before
they are sent. The correspondent puts his story
on the cables, then lets the censor read the
carbons. If the story is considered unfriendly to
Adolf Hitler, the censor may warn the corre-
spondent to watch his step. If the correspond-
ent persists in sending unfriendly stories, he
will find that his news-sources are closed to him;
party and government officials will refuse to
speak to him; government bureaus will refuse
to give him information. Later may come ex-
pulsion from the country.

In the Soviet Union, the censor reads every-
thing. He bluepencils dispatches, and some-
times he will even censor them in their entirety.
Often, however, the correspondent will be per-
mitted to send the story with this note: “The
Soviet censor will not let me say that. ...” Dis-
patches which begin with that phrase are never
printed: they are cabled by the correspondent
for his editor’s personal information, and to
guide him in his editorial policy.

Censorship, however, is not the foreign prop-
agandist’s only tool. Where can the correspond-
ent in Europe get his facts? Here in the United
States the correspondent for (let us say) the

official German news agency can find out what
is happening by reading newspapers and maga-
zines of every shade: Republican, New Deal,
Socialist, Communist, Fascist; checking one
against the other. If there is any doubt about
certain government statistics the opposition
parties will be sure to point that out. Nobody
will have any hesitation in talking with the
correspondent, from the man in the street to
high government officials, for in this country
they don’t throw you in jail for talking.

In Germany, however, the American corre-
spondent faces another situation entirely. He
reads the papers: in fact, he gets most of his
information from them. Unfortunately, he can
learn from them only what the government
wants the German people to know, for the press
of Germany is strictly regulated. During the
past month the German press has been full of
atrocity stories: Hitler apparently wants to stir
his people to hatred against the Czechs. The
German press has also been full of reports that
Soviet troops are being sent to Czechoslovakia:
Hitler, of course, likes to mask his every action
with anti-Communist slogans. “I saved Europe
from Communism” is his propaganda stock-in-
trade. Many of these stories have been cabled
to America: the correspondents knew that some
of them were out-and-out lies, that others had
only the barest relation to fact. Nevertheless,
they felt that Americans should know what the
Nazi government was saying about the Sudeten
crisis.

Government statistics are hard to get in Ger-
many, and those you do get may be doctored.
The correspondent never really knows for sure
because there are no opposition statistics. As
for talking freely with people whom he meets,
that is manifestly impossible. People won’t talk
freely with foreigners, except in praise of the
government — not as long as Germany has its
Gestapo.

News from Europe, by its very nature, is gen-
erally of the it-was-learned-from-an-official-
source variety. Diplomats will talk, but rarely
for direct quotation: that might cause trouble
with another power. Correspondents will occa-
sionally get information from their friends; but
they can’t reveal the source of that information,
not if they value their friends’ safety.

This makes the job of the foreign propa-
gandist almost ridiculously easy. He whispers
his propaganda stories into the ear of the Amer-
ican correspondent, then sits back and waits to

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

read them in the American press. No responsi-
bility can be pinned on him. As long as the
correspondent must come to him for informa-
tion, he can flood America with propaganda.

Pick up any newspaper today and read the
dispatches from Europe. Many of the most im-
portant will be ascribed to mysterious “official”
sources. “A man who saw . . . Adolf Hitler’s
memorandum to Prime Minister Chamberlain
today said that it was most conciliatory in tone
...” (The memorandum was later made pub-
lic; and there was nothing conciliatory about
it.) Now these mystery-men, who generally are
members of the diplomatic corps, sometimes
give the correspondents accurate, unbiased in-
formation. Sometimes, but not always. The
London dispatch that Czechoslovakia had sur-
rendered to Germany, which so enraged Mr.
Gedye, for example, was “learned here today
from an official source.” Whoever planted the
story on American newspapermen did so, ap-
parently, with the hope of forcing Czechoslo-
vakia’s hand, for, as was evidenced by later
developments, some English diplomats were
piqued no end by Czechoslovakia’s delay in
committing national suicide.

Last May, the chancelleries of Europe were
panicked by the report that Germany was mo-
bilizing to invade Czechoslovakia. The story
came originally from Prague; it was relayed to
America by English diplomats in Germany and
London. In his Nuremberg address last month,
Adolf Hitler charged that it was false; and it
may be that Herr Plitler, who is quite an expert
at lying himself and makes no bones about it
(see Mein Kampf), was right. The London
N eius-Chronicle thinks so, although it recently
praised the Foreign Office for its acumen in
spreading the story. Frank C. Hanighen, the
journalist, was in Germany when the story
broke, and he thinks so, too. He says: “I know
of no (foreign) observer who believes that the
Germans were mobilizing to attack Czechoslo-
vakia — and some of the embassies tapped un-
usual sources of information and made inten-
sive investigations before arriving at this
conclusion.”

Later, there was another report that German
troops were getting ready to invade Sude ten-
land. This one actually set the date of the
invasion: August 15. Newspapers headlined it.
Walter Winchell barked it over the air. As the
world now knows, August 15 came and went,
Germany did not march.

The report was started by Genevieve Ta-
bouis, of the French newspaper, L’Oeuvre. It
was picked up shortly afterward by The Week,
of London, then broadcast throughout Amer-
ica. Genevieve Tabouis and Maxim Litvinoff,
the Soviet Foreign Commissar, are close friends;
she also has many friends at the Quai d’Orsay.
It has been suggested by some newspapermen
that either M. Litvinoff or else the Quai d’Orsay
planted the story on her in order to embarrass
Flerr Hitler, reasoning that when Germany
failed to march on August 15, the world prob-
ably would feel that England, France, and the
Soviet Union — the so-called democratic bloc of
nations — had won another diplomatic victory
over Germany and the Fascist axis. This, it was
hoped, would strengthen the sentiment for col-
lective action, these newspapermen maintain.

On the other hand, one New York cable edi-
tor, at least, believes that Germany encourages
newspaper stories that she is getting ready to
march, and surreptitiously helps to spread
them. He says that Germany doesn’t want to
fight, that Germany can’t fight, that Germany
counts on getting her way by threats. Newspa-
per stories of German mobilization, if they are
believed, can be even more threatening, he says,
titan ultimata. He does not believe that Mile.
Tabouis got her story from German diplomats,
merely that German diplomats encouraged it,
hoping to use it for their own propaganda ends. 1

The idea of inspiring fake mobilization sto-
ries in order to intimidate other nations is
hardly new. In the midst of the Ethiopian in-
vasion, when there was talk in the League of
Nations of cutting off Italy’s oil-supply, the
Italian Foreign Office inspired one that nearly
threw England into panic. It was the story
about Italy's “Squadron of Death,” aviators,
who (it was learned from an official source)
had offered to crash their planes into England’s
Mediterranean fleet and wipe it out, if oil
sanctions were declared.

Still another factor operates to color the news
from Europe. The newspaper correspondent
must stay on good terms with government of-
ficials, since he gets so many of his stories from
them. Consequently, he may at times have to
slant his story to avoid offending them. He
plays ball with them, and they play ball with
him. That’s how newspapermen must work.

Now the American newspaperman is the most
indefatigable news-gatherer in the world. If
the facts can be gotten, he’ll get them. He’ll

NEWS FROM EUROPE

write the story as objectively as possible (for,
with few notable exceptions, American news-
papermen are not propagandists.) Still, the
cards are stacked against him. In fact, under
the circumstances, the high level of the average
foreign correspondent's work is truly remark-
able.

It should be remembered, moreover, that all
the reporters who cover Europe for the Amer-
ican press are not Americans. Newspapers some-
times find it necessary to hire Europeans. And
the Europeans, while they way be well versed
in the language, customs, and history of their
country, and while they may have innumerable
news-sources, developed through many years of
newspaper work, nevertheless can hardly be ex-
pected to write objectively. Sometimes, it would
seem, they can't even write. A German was
United Press correspondent in Munich last
spring when Hitler ordered his army to advance
on Austria. He notified his editors that German
troops were moving southward — then, nothing
was heard from him. The United Press was
frantic. Here was the biggest story of the year.
For dozens of newspapers which use the U. P.,
press-time was rolling around. Yet, there was
no word from Munich. Finally, word came: the
correspondent had been ordered to join his
regiment, and he could not, therefore, cover
the invasion. He was going to participate in
the invasion, himself.

The United Press was beaten on the story —
not badly, for it had other ways to get the news

— but that is not the point. Suppose the corre-
spondent had been able to cover the invasion:
how could he possibly have been expected to
report it without bias, particularly with the
shadow of the prison camp looming beside him?

During the next few months, the news from
Europe may become even more bewildering
than it has been heretofore. Certainly, the na-
tions of Europe can be expected to intensify
their efforts to color news dispatches, to flood
the cables with propaganda stories. In England,
for example, there has long been talk of start-
ing an intensive propaganda campaign to coun-
teract the isolationist feeling in the United
States; and now, in view of the wave of revul-
sion that swept the American press at what the
papers chose to call “the betrayal" and “the
sell-out" of Czechoslovakia, it seems likely that
something may soon be done.

For, if England goes to war, she'll do her best
to gain America's support. England believes, as
C. V. R. Thompson, New York correspondent
of the London Evening Standard, wrote only
the other day, that “America is strictly isola-
tionist, strictly pacific, and concerned only with
the welfare of herself and her neighbors." As
Mr. Thompson hastened to add, however, Eng-
land also believes that “Emotionalism fanned
by propaganda sent (America) to help democ-
racy once before. Some bands and some parades,
an incident or two like the sinking of a British
liner or the bombing of London might cause
her to change her mind again."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION NOTES

I. Why are the nations of Europe so concerned
with what Americans think of the European situa-
tion? What attitudes do you think Americans have
toward the European crisis? On what facts do you
base your opinions? What attitudes do you think
each of the following governments wants America to
adopt toward Europe's present conflicts: England,
France, Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, Czech-
oslovakia?

II. How was emotional feeling whipped up in
America before and after our entrance into the
World War in 1917? Consider how propaganda is
used to “get people ready to fight."' Bibliography
suggestions here include, Walter Millis’ The Road
to War and O. W. Riegel’s Mobilizing for Chaos.

Following suggestions given in the bound copy
of Volume I of Propaganda Analysis, examine your
own emotions concerning the present European
crisis. Are you partisan? Why? How does your fear

of war affect your view of the situation in Europe?

III. People who listened to Adolf Hitler’s Nu-
remberg and Berlin addresses over the radio and
then read the full text in their newspapers the fol-
lowing day, were impressed by the fact that state-
ments which seemed relatively unexciting in print
sounded harsh, threatening, and packed with men-
ace when spoken.

What effects do voice tone and quality, and rhythm
patterns of speech have upon radio listeners?

Take down a few excitement-packed sentences
concerning the European crisis. Deliver these sen-
tences, first in a monotone, then as dramatically and
forcefullv as you can. Make notes of the propaganda
devices used in radio oratory. Discuss them.

IV. The Chicago Daily News said recently that
propaganda was Reichsfuehrer Hitler's "deadliest
weapon."

Specifically, what does this statement mean? Con-

8 4

PROPAGANDA ANALYSIS

sider such questions as: (1) Wherein lie the differ-
ences between propaganda in Germany and propa-
ganda in the United States and other democratic
nations? (2) Does the Nazi propaganda machine give
Adolf Hitler the upper hand in negotiations with
the democratic nations? If so, why? If not, why not?
(3) When German newspapers clamor hysterically
for action on some particular issue what inferences
can we draw about the plans of the Nazi govern-
ment? (See the May issue of Propaganda Analysis.)

V. Consider the question of censorship as propa-
ganda. Discuss why nations have censors. George
Seldes’ You Can't Print That should be helpful to
the group leader in planning his discussion outline.

VI. Pick up today’s newspaper. Look at a news
story datelined Berlin on the disorders in Sudeten-
land.

Consider the source of the story. Does the factor
of the city or country from which the story is filed
affect the story in any way? How? Was the news story
ascribed to any person in particular? Was the story
written by the reporter on the basis of his own ob-
servation? On documentary evidence? On an inter-
view? If so, was “the authority’’ named? If the name
of the person is withheld at his request, what do you
think he sought to achieve by asking that his name
be withheld?

Suppose another reporter in Prague were recount-
ing the same event. Is there any possibility that his
version might differ from that of the German cor-
respondent? How might it differ? Why?

^ig*oi6S

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